The world is becoming increasingly aware of the importance of sustainable development, and the refractory industry is no exception. As the demand for environmentally friendly products increases, and regulatory requirements become more stringent, the sector is undergoing significant changes. However, it is difficult to assess the actual sustainability of the industry’s transition due to the lack of reliable data on the environmental performance of refractories.
This study offers solutions to improve the quality of life cycle assessment (LCA) of refractories by analysing the production routes of raw materials. The LCAs of alumina, magnesia, and mullite, allow to identify the most critical environmental domains and impacting processes, searching for underlying trends typical of the sector. Scenarios and sensitivity analyses are used to quantify inconsistencies and to discuss the quality, reliability and comparability of inventory data and results in terms of technological, geographical and temporal coverage.
Strategies are identified for enhancing data quality to improve the robustness of the assessment and calculate comprehensive and accurate results. Emphasis is put on modelling energy consumption, which is demonstrated to be an environmental hotspot. Indeed, most of the results variations generated by regionalization, technological options and eco-design can be attributed to differences in energy mix or energy demand. Such considerations guide the dataset improvement and pave the way for the harmonization of refractories’ LCA.
Overall, the project supports the transition of refractory industry by orienting stakeholders’ effort in data collection and implementation of efficiency solutions towards the current criticalities and environmental hotspots.