Comparative life cycle assessment of different fuel scenarios and milling technologies for ceramic tile production: A case study in China

Abstract China was positioned as the world’s largest producer and consumer of ceramic tiles, accounting for 50% of tile production and 40% of tile consumption in the world approximately. Recently, Chinese ceramic industry has increased its focus on environmental issues with the aim of protecting natural resources and reducing pollutant emission. This study evaluated and compared the environmental impacts of ceramic tiles produced by traditional technology and cleaner production technology using life cycle assessment methodology with “cradle to gate” perspective. The results showed that the energy consumptions and emissions from fuel combustion were the hotspots of the environmental impact caused by tile production. The drying and firing processes were the main contributors to the energy consumption at the ceramic production stage. Moreover, the environmental impact reduction potential of different cleaner production technologies was elaborated in this paper. The results proved that applying natural gas as fuel instead of coal (producer gas) caused less damage on human health and ecosystem but more damage on the resource. The dry-milling process has potential to reduce environmental impacts compared with wet-milling process in all midpoint and endpoint indicators. In addition, the sensitivity analysis of input parameters, transportation distance and qualified products rate was conducted to identify the key parameters that have great influence on the results.