Life Cycle Assessment in the Energy Generation Process - Variant Analysis in Metallurgical Industry

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the environmental management techniques, which aims to assess potential hazards to the environment of products, processes or entire systems. The role of LCA has been increasing as it was proposed in many EU and Polish official documents. The present paper aims to analyse the environmental impact of the process of energy generation in a boiler station (hereinafter referred to as the power plant), incorporated in the integrated mill operating in the Polish ferrous metal industry. Obtained results show that the most harmful potential for the environment presents the emission of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides - this affects the respiratory system. The following impact factors potentially affecting the production of energy in the power plant are the climate change category, carcinogenic factors and fossil fuels. Moreover, comparative study for four variants of annual operation of the power plant was performed, whereby the variants differed only by the proportion in dosage of two types of fuel: hard coal and blast furnace gas (other fuels such as natural and coke gas were left at the current levels - they are used as "starting" fuel). Using the blast furnace gas will always be less harmful alternative for the environment, as it is a waste fuel, a side product, which requires no material and energy cost to produce. The only drawback of this fuel is high carbon emission index while combusting the blast furnace gas.