Integrated environmental and economic life cycle assessment of improvement strategies for a ceramic industry

Industry is accountable for over one quarter of EU final energy consumption and one fifth of carbon emissions. To meet EU targets towards carbon neutrality, efforts need to take place in different industrial sectors, especially in energy intensive ones. Methodologies and tools aimed to support decision towards both cost and emission reduction targets are key to boost the adoption of cleaner production practices in industry. As an energy and resource intensive sector, the ceramic industry needs support at identifying and implementing solutions to lower its environmental impacts while being economically feasible. Thus, this work proposes a methodological approach to assess the environmental and economic life-cycle performance of alternative improvement scenarios for a ceramic sanitaryware manufacturing plant. By analyzing the actual process energy consumption and existing waste heat potential, three waste heat recovery scenarios are assessed and compared to the existing system to reduce natural gas consumption. Furthermore, aiming to lower the embodied emissions associated with electricity consumption, the installation of an on-site photovoltaic plant is also studied. The results show that, by applying heat recovery from flue gases to preheat combustion air, the industry may achieve a significant reduction of the environmental impact embodied in their products (−13% of CO2-eq emissions), while attaining notable economic savings with assumable payback period within the investment life-time. Results also show that despite the higher investment costs, the electricity self-production through photovoltaics strongly contributes to a greater reduction of several environmental impacts (up to −33% CO2-eq), with higher economic savings and payback time. The proposed methodological approach proves to be useful to compare the environmental and economic benefits of investment decisions and raise industrial confidence in strategies towards carbon neutrality.