Environmental Impact Studied using Life Cycle Assessment on Cement Industry

Abstract

Abstract The rapid development in Indonesia has caused cement production to be directly proportional to its needs. The cement industry produces commercial cement for domestic development needs. Cement is made by means of a series of exploitation and production processes that involve the main process and supporting processes in its activities. To be able to produce cement, it requires raw materials, fuel and chemical additives, and these activities produce emissions that have an impact of decreasing environmental quality. The gas emissions produced are CO2, CH4, NOx, SOx, N2O and particulate. These emissions have an impact of increasing global warming and decreasing ambient air quality which has an impact on human health and the environment. This study identifies the impact of the main process based on the cradle-to-gate approach, starting from the process of exploitation of raw materials to the production process that produces cement as the main product. Impact identification was done using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method with the SimaPro 8.5.2 application. The Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) categories include global warming potential for 100 years, acidification, and carcinogens. The method used was TRACI, a midpoint approach. Results after normalization show that the highest impacts generated were global warming from kiln process (353,473); acidification from kiln process (95,273), and carcinogens from raw mill process (4,837,721).