Abstract

The construction industry is responsible for several environmental impacts because of various industrial activities. Quantifying these impacts is a major roadmap to reducing them. This study carried out a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) on two cement plants using the midpoint (problem-oriented approach): Cementos Cosmos S.A. Spanish cement plant (with Best Available Techniques Reference Document –BREF- incorporation) and a typical European plant to quantify the environmental impacts’ gains in cement production. The analysis was based on the Functional Unit of 1ton of cement produced in each plant, and the LCA software used was SimaPro 8.2. The result of the analysis showed that the impact categories from Cementos Cosmos S.A. plant had significant reduction when compared with the impact categories from European plant analysis. However, Ozone depletion increased by 5% as a result of high quantity of petroleum coke used in Cementos Cosmos S.A. plant. Also, Climate change has not a great reduction, this is also due to high amount of limestone used in the production process of the cement plant; These however influenced the entire result of the analysis. These results show that the BREF recommendations are very effective as there is great improvement in the environmental performance however, further reduction of fossil fuels (petcoke) and limestone should be considered.The construction industry is responsible for several environmental impacts because of various industrial activities. Quantifying these impacts is a major roadmap to reducing them. This study carried out a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) on two cement plants using the midpoint (problem-oriented approach): Cementos Cosmos S.A. Spanish cement plant (with Best Available Techniques Reference Document –BREF- incorporation) and a typical European plant to quantify the environmental impacts’ gains in cement production. The analysis was based on the Functional Unit of 1ton of cement produced in each plant, and the LCA software used was SimaPro 8.2. The result of the analysis showed that the impact categories from Cementos Cosmos S.A. plant had significant reduction when compared with the impact categories from European plant analysis. However, Ozone depletion increased by 5% as a result of high quantity of petroleum coke used in Cementos Cosmos S.A. plant. Also, Climate change has not a great reduction, this is also due to high amount of limestone used in the production process of the cement plant; These however influenced the entire result of the analysis. These results show that the BREF recommendations are very effective as there is great improvement in the environmental performance however, further reduction of fossil fuels (petcoke) and limestone should be considered.