Life Cycle Assessment of Nickel Production in China

Abstract:

Nickel is widely used in stainless steel and other industries, while there are a lot of energy consumption and environmental pollution in the process of nickel production. Based on the technical framework of life cycle assessment and evaluation model of ReCiPe, the aim of this paper is to find out the environmental hotspot and make suggestions for improvement by researching the environment inpact of nickel production from the process of mining, beneficiation, smelting and transportation. The result shows that: Smelting is the most important environmental effect stage in which the environmental impact load accounts for 52.18% of total environmental impact, because a lot of electricity is consumed in electrolysis process, while the Fossil Depletion Potential (FDP) is the largest environmental impact type, accounting for 42.32% of total environmental impact, which is due to the consumption of a number of fossil energy in the mining and smelting process of nickel ore. It is necessary to use advanced mining technology and mine backfill technology to reduce the consumption of auxiliary materials, which is of great significance for reducing energy consumption and emission.

• Periodical: Materials Science Forum (Volume 913)
• Pages: 1004-1010
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/MSF.913.1004
• Online since: February 2018
• Authors: Shu Ya Deng*, Xian Zheng Gong
• Keywords: Environmental Impact, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Nickel

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