Life Cycle Assessment of Metallurgical Processes Based on Physical Flowsheet Models

Simulation combined with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used to quantify the environmental impact of metals production processes. The results for different processing options, as well as the effect of having the same plant at different locations can be evaluated and compared. HSC SIM 8, which is linked with GaBi, or other LCA software can be used to carry out this work. The material flows are calculated using HSC SIM, and they are then converted to environmental indicators. The refining of silver using the High Current Density (HCD) electrorefining process is used as an example in this paper in order to show the link between simulation software and LCA.