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Project

Integrating the future in life cycle assessment? An ex-ante case study of emerging innovative slag treatment technologies.

The integration of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of emerging circular technologies at an early stage of their technological development is crucial to identify the most promising pathways for further development efforts. However, the final goal is not to assess the environmental performance of emerging technologies at lab or pilot scale, but of the estimated future scaled-up technology. Such a study can be defined as an ex-ante LCA. In this context, the general objective of this project is to assess the environmental consequences that might occur when new circular technologies to treat metallurgic by-products are introduced, by incorporating an ex-ante approach in LCA. In ex-ante LCAs, both the expected future developments of an emerging technology (foreground system) and the consequences of introducing such a technology to the market (background system) should be taken into account. A novel and structured approach for both systems will be developed by integrating technological learning, scale effects and non-linear and market based relationships in LCA. The proposed approach will be applied, tested and validated with a case study on emerging technologies aiming to recover the residual metals (Cr, V, Nb and Mo) entrapped in stainless steel and FeCr slags, under the constraint of a zero-waste approach.
Date:1 Oct 2019 →  30 Sep 2023
Keywords:CIRCULAR ECONOMY
Disciplines:Life cycle analysis of construction materials, Materials recycling and valorisation, Life cycle engineering
Project type:Collaboration project