Abstract
Secondary production of non-ferrous metals produced from waste can reduce the environmental burdens associated with primary production and contribute to achieving sustainable development goals. At the present condition, secondary metal manufacturers lack decision support system through an appropriate impact assessment framework. Thus, this paper presents an integrated impact assessment framework for primary and secondary metal production, using the material flow analysis and life cycle assessment. The non-ferrous metal analysed in this study is gold as a case study for the precious metal recovery from anode slime. The sensitivity analysis showed that using gold produced from combined primary and secondary sources generates significantly less environmental impact (e.g. climate change, freshwater ecotoxicity, and mineral resources depletion) in comparison with only primary metals. Further exploration of increasing separation and recovery efficiency of secondary production only suggested a marginal decrease in the overall impact.
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