Environmental analysis for identifying challenges to recover used reinforced refractories in industrial furnaces

Reinforced refractories have been demonstrated to be economically and technically useful in industrial furnaces to improve energy efficiency. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge from the environmental point of view in which the end-of-life of these materials was analysed from a life cycle perspective. This research examines the use of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to evaluate the environmental impact of alumina/ZrO2 and MgO/ZrO2 as reinforced refractories, considering the manufacturing and two different end-of-life scenarios, disposal in landfills and recycling. The results indicated that the environmental performance of these reinforced refractories can be improved by means of promoting the reuse or recycling of the materials and reducing the amount of landfill waste within an integrated waste management system. Greater environmental benefits were obtained when the recycling efficiency was increased and the transport distance was decreased, especially in the case of alumina/ZrO2. The research demonstrated that it was more sensible to use recycling. Consequently, efforts to consider these environmental results should be undertaken by the industrial sector to promote material recovery. In this sense, a matrix of additional actions is proposed to reduce the overall environmental impact of the system further. •The alumina/ZrO2 environmental impact is more sensible to the recycling activity.•The environmental impacts rise when the transport distance is increased.•Increasing in the replacement ratio of raw materials enhances environmental benefits.•Some additional actions are identified to reduce the global environmental impact.