Abstract
Copper demand in China is expected to grow considerably over the coming decades, driving energy use and environmental impacts related to copper production. To explore the environmental impacts of copper production in China, we used a variant of Life Cycle Sustainability Analysis that combined the Life Cycle Assessment methodology with the Chinese copper demand projections from 2010 to 2050. The results indicate that the environmental impacts of pyrometallurgical copper production are expected to increase more than twofold during this period and remain the largest contributor to the environmental footprint. Secondary copper production emits the least pollutions. Increasing the share of secondary copper production is the most environmental friendly option for copper production. To this end, China may focus on improving the classification of waste copper products and recycling infrastructure for end-of-life management. Hard coal use and production are crucial contributors to climate change in the context of copper production. Cleaning up copper production processes and improving energy efficiency would also help reduce environmental impacts. Energy transition can significantly reduce the environmental impacts of copper production, but it also can increase copper requirement.It does not visibly contribute to reduce human toxicity as well.
Highlights
Copper production is a basic raw material industry that provides one of the key non-ferrous metals for infrastructure and buildings
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology that is widely used to assess the environmental impacts of products and materials (Norgate, 2001; Norgate et al, 2007; Van Genderen et al, 2016)
The environmental impacts per unit metal production have been analyzed by various authors based on the inputs and outputs of production processes (Davidson et al, 2016; Zhang et al, 2016)
Summary
Copper production is a basic raw material industry that provides one of the key non-ferrous metals for infrastructure and buildings. It is energy intensive as energy is used in the whole life cycle of copper production, including mining, beneficiation, smelting and refining, in the directly processes and through the indirectly production of inputs, e.g. electricity generation. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology that is widely used to assess the environmental impacts of products and materials (Norgate, 2001; Norgate et al, 2007; Van Genderen et al, 2016). Tan and Khoo (2005), Nunez and Jones (2016) and Farjana et al (2019a) studied environmental impacts of primary aluminum production. Several scholars investigated the environmental impacts of mining processes with LCA, and identified key contributors to one or more impact categories (coal, Burchart-Korol et al (2016); gold, Haque and Norgate (2014); nickel, Khoo et al (2017); rare earth elements, Weng et al (2016); uranium, Parker et al (2016))
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
