Abstract
Cement production needs effective ways to promote the sustainability level due to its huge energy consumption and intensive environmental emissions. In this paper, we conduct an emergy accounting to assess the performance of the resource utilization and environmental emissions of a New Suspension Preheaters (NSP) cement plant in China. The sustainability level associated with utilization efficiency and environmental load of the cement production process are quantified based on the emergy-based indicators. It can be concluded that in the total emergy input, nonrenewable resource input and economic investment contribute most because the raw materials of lime and sandstone are from surrounding environment, and the dependence on energy and materials purchased from the economy. Particularly, emergy-based environmental emission indices for CO2, SO2, NOx, PM10 and waste water are calculated to reveal the life-cycle cost of cement production and the loses of both natural capital and human health. Regarding the emission intensity of total emergy input, CO2 emission intensity is calculated to be the highest, followed by wastewater, PM10 and SO2, while NOx is the lowest.
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