Production of natural and recycled aggregates: the environmental impacts of energy consumption and CO2 emissions

Abstract

Natural aggregates (NA) are crushed and processed in crushing plants after the extraction stage in quarries. In the present study, the aggregates are divided into three scenarios, depending on the production methods. The first scenario considers the production of NA, the second scenario deals with the production of recycled aggregates (RA) with respect to construction and demolition waste, and the third scenario, which is a hybrid scenario, handles the combination of NA and RA by assuming a 50% mixing percentage. In this research, we assess the environmental impacts on the production of aggregates via each scenario, using life cycle assessment; in addition, energy consumption and CO2 emissions are considered as the environmental variables. We conclude that Iran’s current policy with an annual energy consumption of 1.48 million tons of oil equivalent (toe) can have a footprint of 2.88 million tons of CO2 eq emissions per year (the first scenario). Achieving 30 and 36% reduction in annual energy consumption and CO2 emissions, respectively, by the third scenario compared to the first scenario indicates the destructive effect of the first scenario from the environmental outlook.