TY - JOUR
T1 - Environmental Sustainability of Niobium Recycling: The Case of the Automotive Industry
AU - Rahimpour Golroudbary, Saeed
AU - Krekhovetckii, Nikita
AU - El Wali, Mohammad
AU - Kraslawski, Andrzej
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments: The authors acknowledge support from the Viipuri Management Research Lab of LUT University to provide AnyLogic® (University 8.3.3) software. The authors acknowledge Peter G. Jones for his help in editing the paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2019/1/10
Y1 - 2019/1/10
N2 - The recycling of scrap is one of the common approaches aiming at reduction of mining-based production of critical metals and mitigation of their supply risk as well as processing-related environmental impact. The number of currently available end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) indicates—significant potential for critical metals recycling, especially niobium (Nb). Therefore, the quantification of environmental impact of niobium recovery starts to be an important issue in assessment of sustainability of large-scale recycling processes. In this paper, we assess energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in individual stages of niobium supply chain in the automotive industry over the period 2010–2050. The different stages including mining, production and recycling are analyzed using dynamic simulation. The results show the majority of the consumed energy (45% of energy demand in niobium supply chain) is used in the primary production stage. This stage also contributes to 72% of total gas emissions of supply chain over the period 2010–2050. Mining of niobium consumes up to 36% of energy and generates ca. 21% of GHG emissions. While, in recycling stage, the secondary production of niobium requires 19% of supply chain energy and generates 7% of gas emissions. The detailed calculations show that recycling of niobium could save around 133–161 m GJ energy between 2010 and 2050. The recycling would also contribute to the reduction of 44–53 mt CO2-eq in the same period. It shows around 18% reduction of annual emissions between 2010 and 2050 thanks to reuse of niobium in secondary production rather than primary production.
AB - The recycling of scrap is one of the common approaches aiming at reduction of mining-based production of critical metals and mitigation of their supply risk as well as processing-related environmental impact. The number of currently available end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) indicates—significant potential for critical metals recycling, especially niobium (Nb). Therefore, the quantification of environmental impact of niobium recovery starts to be an important issue in assessment of sustainability of large-scale recycling processes. In this paper, we assess energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in individual stages of niobium supply chain in the automotive industry over the period 2010–2050. The different stages including mining, production and recycling are analyzed using dynamic simulation. The results show the majority of the consumed energy (45% of energy demand in niobium supply chain) is used in the primary production stage. This stage also contributes to 72% of total gas emissions of supply chain over the period 2010–2050. Mining of niobium consumes up to 36% of energy and generates ca. 21% of GHG emissions. While, in recycling stage, the secondary production of niobium requires 19% of supply chain energy and generates 7% of gas emissions. The detailed calculations show that recycling of niobium could save around 133–161 m GJ energy between 2010 and 2050. The recycling would also contribute to the reduction of 44–53 mt CO2-eq in the same period. It shows around 18% reduction of annual emissions between 2010 and 2050 thanks to reuse of niobium in secondary production rather than primary production.
KW - Critical materials
KW - Dynamic model
KW - Energy consumption
KW - Greenhouse gas emissions
KW - Niobium
KW - Recycling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85063956503&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/recycling4010005
DO - 10.3390/recycling4010005
M3 - Article
SN - 2313-4321
VL - 4
JO - Recycling
JF - Recycling
IS - 1
M1 - 5
ER -