Study On Material Input Of Metal Production

As the society is developing forward constantly, the mankind is strengthening exploitation and utilization of the natural resources constantly. Success of industrial revolution caused the human being's ability of exploitaging natural resources get unprecedentedly improved, and caused the high-speed economy development at the same time. However, high-speed economy development results in a series of environmental questions, such as the worsenning environment and exhausted resources, etc. Mankind's behaviors of immoderately use the environment and resources suffered from the retaliation of environment, and then begin to study the sustainable development problem. Resource shortage has already become the important factor of restricting economic sustainable development, based on the orientation to achieve sustainability, companies are required to make decisions and carry out programs and projects in a manner that maintains or enhances financial viability while maximizing benefits to the natural environment, and reduced or eliminated the environmental impacts of their operations. In order to implementing and maintaining a "cradle-to-grave" system for environmental management and measuring and monitoring their product life cycle, Material input per service(or product)unit was advanced. MIPS can be applied on several levels e.g. for products and services, enterprises, households, regions and national economies.Production of iron ore, aluminum and copper provides raw materials for the nation's industries, and at the same time creates various environmental impacts. Material input per service(or product) unit is a comprehensive indicator that can be used to quantify such impacts and is one of the important indicators that we should measure and control in order to solve ecological and environmental problems at the source. Most industrial products contain metal and nonmetal minerals. Therefore, investigating material inputs of metals is of great significance. In this study, material inputs of iron ore, crude copper and crude aluminum of China were calculated and analyzed. The results show that, on the average, a ton of finished iron ore, crude copper and crude aluminum in 2000 have an abiotic material input of 4.19t, 476.36t and 103.97t and a water input of 4.82t, 204.94t and 1218.77t respectively. While the overall material input of iron ore and crude copper displayed a decreasing trend, that of crude aluminum presented ruleless over the study period. The material inputs of three products have prodigiouss different during their different life cycles.The application of MIPS in the industry of metal has great significance inimproving production and resource use efficiency. The results have a practical value for further calculation on the ecological rucksacks of iron and steel and steel-based productsproduced in China.