Life cycle assessment of the comprehensive utilisation of vanadium titano-magnetite

Abstract

This study describes the life cycle assessment (LCA) of the comprehensive utilisation of vanadium titano-magnetite (VTM) through the integrated steel production and valuable element (V and Ti) extraction route. The major sources of environmental impacts are described and pollution prevention methods are proposed. The LCA methodology is based on the ISO 14044 standard, which uses GaBi 6.0 software and the Ecoinvent database, and the life cycle inventory (LCI) data (input and output) are from Pan. Steel. Impact assessment results indicate that production of pig iron in blast furnace (BF) exerts the most extensive impacts on global warming potential for the time horizon of 100 years (GWP100) and fossil fuel consumption. By contrast, iron ore mining dressing and sintering contribute the most to acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP) and photochemical ozone creation potential (PCOP) because of dust and pollutant gas emissions. When indicator contributions are considered, the observed impacts on AP (50.88%), GWP100 (24.25%) and photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP) (19.51%) are higher than those on EP, human toxic potential (HTP) and abiotic depletion potential (ADP). Therefore, when processes with environmental impacts are taken into account, the iron mining and dressing, iron ore sintering and BF iron-making processes must be considered, when category indicators are taken into account, AP, GWP100 and POCP must be considered.