World of Metallurgy ERZMETALL 68 2015 No 3146 Markus A Reuter et al Lead Zinc and their Minor Elements Enablers of a Circular Economy 5 Conclusions System optimization and metallurgical infrastructure criticality Ultimately metals are used in products This paper shows that all efforts to quantify sustainability should be con densed into a simple but rigorously based message as shown by the recyclability label in the centre of Figure 15 It also shows the importance of lead zinc and their minor metals as key elements of a sustainable society one which can be communicated in a simple form to the consumer It would be self evident that to achieve a sustainable soci ety one must be acutely aware of the key role the metal lurgical industry plays in a resource efficient society when developing environmental policy in a circular economy Some key issues that have been highlighted in this paper that systemically link the limits of a circular economy the role which lead and zinc play in enabling it and the meth odology to achieve it In summary these include A detailed understanding of metallurgy is required as system integrated metal production infrastructure is central to a sustainable society Ensure that key performance indicators are compara ble to drive systems to true limits Derived indicators must be based on rigorous simu lation so that proper transparent comparisons can be made to inform policy Lead and zinc metallurgy are excellent examples of System Integrated Metal Production SIMP It is their strength together with their minor elements rendering them all a cornerstone of the circular economy Material centric considerations seem to drive criticality studies of elements in a non linked disjointed manner One importance is also Process Metallurgical Infras tructure Criticality which has a product centric basis of considering all elements in an interconnected way If this interconnected basis is considered metals may be more or even less critical than currently presented Lowering the footprint over the life time of a product due to innovative functionality such as a LED must be augmented by a high recycling rate of the product Thus energy efficiency must harmonize with material efficiency to increase the total resource efficiency of a product There are some challenges in zinc and lead metallurgy that have to be addressed to help drive a circular economy namely How to recover metals from EoL sources such as scrap or residues This may mean a rethink of what techno logy should be used or where it sits in the chain of production An example of this is the treatment of zinc residues where large amounts of base metals plus the specialty critical metals are locked away in tailings Fig 18 A comparison of the footprint of zinc production for Outotec solutions using simulation and design data from crushed ore to product ex cluding mining and data on the GaBi database also see Table 2 Figure 18 Re ter W P en tia l Outotec Technology Shading represents the range with mining crushing included for different ore grades mines energy mixes etc added to Outotec Solutions Direct comparison is ik d t l P ial rib uti on of GW l W arm ing Po te Averagefrom Ga r sy ue o many unc ear parameters in environmental databases rib uti on of A fic ati on Po ten ti Dis tr G lob al aBi Database Dis tr Ac idi f 2050 2550 3050 3550 4050 GWP kg CO2 eq tonne ZnBelow Average Impact Above Average Impact 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 AP kg SO2 eq tonne Zn EP en tia l OC P on Po ten tia l str ibu tio n o f op hic ati on Po te bu tio n o f P O l O zo ne Cr ea tio Dis Eu tro Dis tri Ph oto ch em ica 0 39 0 89 1 39 1 89 2 39 2 89 3 39 3 89 EP kg Phosphate eq tonne Zn 0 76 0 96 1 16 1 36 1 56 1 76 POCP kg Ethene eq tonne Zn

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