ecoinvent Forum Archive

Hello, 

I am studying the impact of using some plastic wastes into clinker production (for energy use through incineration + ashes use into the clinker) instead of treat these wastes with municipal incineration without energy recovery. 

I found the datasets linked to clinker and I was thinking using Clinker production/clinker vs clinker production / waste plastic. But I am really surprise to see that all the clinker production using waste are not filled. No information inside. There is only one input : waste plastic, 1 kg, while the clinker production / clinker is fully filled. How am I suppose to use this ? 

Thanks in advance for your help. I am really blocked here !!!

Christelle

Dear Christelle

If you look at the undefined dataset (i.e. before linking and allocation) accessible in ecoQeury, you will see that those products are modelled as negative reference products. This means that they are treated in the clinker dataset. All impacts of this treatment are assigned to clinker (none to the wastes). This causes them to then appear as empty datasets. This is not the ideal modelling of clinker, unfortunately this is due to technical requirements of the database.

Something that might be interesting for you are the reports regarding clinker, cement and concrete available here (after a free registration) under documentation - Building and Construction Materials. You might find some interesting sources in these reports. 

Best regards,

Lucia Valsasina, Project Manager, ecoinvent Association

Thank you for your answer Lucia. But I still not know how to proceed for this. I can not model "classical" clinker vs clinker made through coprocessing. I do not find wastes plastic impacts into clinker dataset. Any suggestion ?

Dear Christelle, 

The impacts of burning plastics are included in the emissions but the they are not separated from the impacts of the other wastes. You can take at clinker production in different geographies and see if there is something close to what you need. The reports mentioned in the my post before might contain useful infromation. You can also take a look at the processes for treatment of waste plastic avaiable in ecoinvent, we also offer waste treatment tools (covering incineration, landfill, open burning and open dump) but nothing specific to clinker, I guess there might also be different regulations in different countries. See the tool here and report 13 (read here how to access it).

Best regards, 

Lucia Valsasina, Project Manager, ecoinvent Association