Life Cycle Assessment of Marble Manufacturing

Abstract

The fast increase in population is placing enormous strain on the world's manufacturing industries to meet the demands of an ever-increasing number of people. Although the ‘manufacturing sector is vital to the growth of any nation, it also has a detrimental effect on the environment. The sedimentary and calcium carbonated nature of the limestone (raw material for marble) makes its superior and important in the in the earth crust. In many production areas, limestone is making a lasting influence, despite health concerns surrounding it. To assess and mitigate these environmental consequences, systematic measurement is required. To fill this research gap, a comprehensive environmental assessment was carried out for a mechanized and non-mechanized marble manufacturing facilities in Pakistan. The modeling software tool used was SimaPro 9.5, and Recipe 2016 methodologies were utilized to evaluate various midpoint and endpoint impacts. The results demonstrated that mechanized and non-mechanized marble manufacturing techniques had the biggest environmental impact in terms of effect categories, the most affected were terrestrial ecotoxicity and global warming, with values ranges from‘128-170 kg 1,4 DCB and 60-64 kg CO2 eq, respectively. At the endpoint level, the human health category was more negatively impacted than the others in non-mechanized marble manufacturing because of Terrestrial ecotoxicity, Acidification, fine particulate matter, and global warming. The quantity of waste produced in mechanized is less as/compared/to non-mechanized marble manufacturing/consequently making more environmental damage e-g freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication. The greater amount of waste in non-mechanized marble manufacturing causes more terrestrial ecotoxicity as compared to mechanized marble manufacturing with no waste and vice versa furthermore due to high waste land use and environmental impact is quite higher for non-mechanized marble manufacturing. Water consumption for mechanized marble manufacturing during extraction phase is higher than mechanized which negatively impact the biodiversity of the near-site area. Non-mechanized marble manufacturing is more hazardous due to landslide, blasting and lose rocks which negatively affect work conditions and human health category.