Assessing environmental impacts of the mining sector
In the short video here above, PhD student Vanessa Schenker gives a brief overview of the project (if the video is not available in your region, please use external pagethis link).
The transition towards low-carbon technologies requires significant amounts of metals. Environmental impacts linked to metal mining and processing have received great attention since the expected demand will intensify these impacts globally. However, environmental consequences strongly vary among metals. Site-specific assessments of metal mining and processing uncovered the variability of environmental impacts across various mining locations of even one metal. Therefore, global assessments of metal supply chains lack details, and identification of environmental hotspots is limited. This project focuses on different approaches to enhance life cycle inventory modeling. Additionally, life cycle assessments will be performed to highlight environmental hotspots within metal supply chains. The overall goal is to improve the accuracy of life cycle inventories of metals needed for low-carbon technologies by especially considering their geological context.
Regionalized life cycle assessment of present and future lithium production for Li-ion batteries
Vanessa Schenker, Christopher Oberschelp and Stephan Pfister
Resources, Conservation and Recycling, vol. 187, pp. 106611, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2022.
external pagehttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106611
Metals for low-carbon technologies: Environmental impacts and relation to planetary boundaries
Vanessa Schenker, Viktoras Kulionis, Christopher Oberschelp and Stephan Pfister
Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 372, pp. 133620, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2022.
external pagehttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.133620
The variability of environmental impacts: Life cycle analysis of lithium mining in South America
Vanessa Schenker, Stephan Pfister, Christopher Oberschelp
Symposium on Lithium Supply Chains, 2020, Sydney (online)
Carbon footprint of current and future lithium carbonate production in South America
Vanessa Schenker, Christopher Oberschelp, Stephan Pfister
8th International Workshop on Lithium, Industrial Minerals and Energy, 2021, Bolivia (online)
DownloadLink (PDF, 1.6 MB)