Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2025

A change of paradigm on mineral resources flows in LCA: necessary, and feasible

Résumé

The assessment of impacts associated with mineral resource use has long been debated among LCA method developers and practitioners. Several methods (including the EDP, ADR/LPST, ARP, JRC-LCI, CTI-LCIA and EVDP methods) have been developed in the recent years to go beyond the assessment of contributions to resources depletion over a product life cycle in LCA, and to rather assess contributions to reduction of resource accessibility and resource dissipation. This study builds on, and extends, a review on the fundamentals of these recently developed methods, including key underlying choices and assumptions, and operationalization. It moreover analyses the terminology associated with “material flows” in LCI modelling, and discusses the implementation of material balancing in process engineering and Life Cycle Thinking. This study highlights the two pivotal aspects that make a change of paradigm on mineral resources in LCA necessary. Firstly, some recently developed methods pledge for new LCIs to be developed (JRC-LCI method), or require the development of new LCIs (EVDP, CTI-LCIA) for any potential wide implementation. These new methods call for a deep change of paradigm on modelling mineral resources in LCIs, no longer considering only primary mineral resources extracted from ground, but also mineral resources flows within the technosphere, or from the technosphere to the ecosphere. Secondly, rethinking mineral resources flows in LCIs is necessary to support the development of material-balanced LCIs. The latter contribute to more consistent and complete accounting of intermediate exchanges, emissions and resources flows at the unit process level. Moreover this study develops a stepwise approach to make this change of paradigm feasible in LCA practice. This approach integrates material accounting and balancing principles in LCI results, enabling to derive balanced LCI datasets and databases. It builds on a new nomenclature of mineral resource flows, not only extracted from ground but also exchanged within technosphere, and from technosphere to ecosphere. This framework is showcased with a step by step implementation to the case of the production of a battery raw material, using ecoinvent datasets. The influence on toxicity- and resources-related impact categories is discussed, particularly highlighting the benefits gained from this framework towards sounder support to decision-making with LCA.

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hal-05020193 , version 1 (04-04-2025)

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  • HAL Id : hal-05020193 , version 1

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Antoine Beylot, Jo Dewulf. A change of paradigm on mineral resources flows in LCA: necessary, and feasible. SETAC Europe 35th Annual Meeting, May 2025, Vienne (Austria), Austria. ⟨hal-05020193⟩

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