期刊
JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION
卷 139, 期 -, 页码 1282-1297出版社
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.08.132
关键词
Rare earth elements; Life cycle impact assessment; Environmental impacts; Mine production
资金
- CSIRO Mineral Resources [12/03745]
- Monash University
The rare earth elements (REE) play an indispensable role in modern technology, especially in wind turbines, or as phosphors, catalysts, specialty alloys and others. Despite the benefits of REE, there has been minimal research assessing the environmental impacts of REE mining. Here, we present a cradle to gate scale life cycle impact assessment for 26 operating and potential REE mining projects, focusing on the gross energy requirement and the global warming impacts of the primary REE production stage. The results suggest that the declining ore grades of REE significantly increase the environmental impact of REE production. On a unit basis (such as GJ/t-metal or kg CO2e/t-metal), REE production causes higher environmental impacts than common metals (e.g. Cu, bauxite, and steel), with the refining stage being responsible for the greatest proportion of these impacts. Changing the REE production configuration could lead to diverse environmental footprints associated with each project. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据