Life Cycle Environmental And Economic Assessment Of Typical Ceramic Tiles Production

Ceramic tiles are important building decorative materials with massive and continuous demand.In this study,taking polished ceramic tile and interior wall tile for example,life cycle environmental and economic impacts of two scenarios were quantified via life cycle assessment(LCA)and life cycle costing(LCC)methods.The two scenarios are ceramic tile production without and with waste control.The ReCiPe method was used to conduct LCA.The methods of willingness to pay,actual costing,and labor costing were adopted to calculate LCC.In this study,primary inventory data was obtained from the actual operation,and background data was obtained from CPLCID(Chinese Process-based Life Cycle Inventory Database)and Eco-invent database.Results show that evident emission reduction has been accomplished by waste control(i.e.,air control and wastewater treatment).Climate change,marine ecotoxicity,terrestrial ecotoxicity,human toxicity,and fossil depletion were the main environmental categories because of the chlorine to soil,sulfur dioxide to air,and carbon dioxide to air emissions.A process-based analysis shows that inorganic chemicals conspicuously accounted for the general environmental(12.93%)and economic(39.62%)burdens,which mainly attributed to the process of glazing and generation of extra glaze.In this study,the life cycle cost of ceramic tiles product is 2.77 dollar/m2 with a net profit of 0.27 dollar/m2.The cost is mainly generated from equipment(17%),sand(14%),chemical inorganics(13%),maintenance(9%),and tax(8%).Notably,chemical inorganics is responsible for the highest environmental and economic burden in LCA coupled LCC analysis.Besides,transport,coal,and electricity also have high environmental-economic burden,whereas direct air emissions is of high environmental impact but with low cost.Through sensitivity analysis of the key processes and economic costs,it can be found that the decreasing of chemical inorganics would bring the highest environmental and economic benefits,with decrease in climate change and cost by 0.11 kg CO2 eq and $1.82x10-2,respectively.However,the environmental benefits and economic benefits brought by the coal are the least.Via Monte Carlo simulation to conduct uncertainty analysis of two scenarios,without waste control scenario is proof to be definite or significant higher than with waste control scenario on terrestrial acidification,marine excotoxicity,freshwater excotoxicity,marine eutrophication,freshwater eutrophication,and particulate matter formation.Uncertainty analysis results indicate that the environmental impact potential of the rest categories are similar in the two scenarios.Comparing to other case studies and Building Sanitary Ceramics Unit Energy Consumption Limit,the current case has lower pollutants emission level and comprehensive energy consumption value also reaches the standard of advanced value products.Chemical inorganics,which are responsible for the mainly significant impacts of environment and economy,are mainly generated from the glazing process and the resulting residual glaze.This process is suggested to be improved as the key process to decrease environmental and economic burdens.In case of considering alternative electricity generation types(e.g.,hydropower)it can significantly lower the impacts on climate change and marine ecotoxicity.Therefore,the ceramic tile industry can be beneficial from the waste control,reduction of chemical inorganics,and utilization of clean and renewable energy for reducing industry pollution.Specifically,controlling the amount of residual glaze from production process originally.