Effect of Mass and Economic Allocation on Tellurium Life Cycle Impacts
Abstract
Tellurium (Te) is a rare metalloid that is predominantly produced from the treatment of anode slimes formed during copper (Cu) electrolytic refining. the US Government lists Te as one of the 50 critical minerals, partly, because of its use in thin-film photovoltaic (PV) technology. Given policy initiatives to increase Te production, it is important to evaluate the life-cycle environmental impacts of Te recovery as a by-product of Cu processing. the literature contains a few specific life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of groups of metals that include Te without proper regard to impacts per life-cycle stage of Te production or the effect of allocation on the results. This study builds an LCA model of the production system of Te from anode slimes treatment to evaluate the effect of allocation on life-cycle impacts. We build life cycle inventories using data from the Ecoinvent v3.7.1 database, literature, and engineering calculations and allocate impacts in proportion to products' mass and economic value. the results show that economic value-Based allocation yields greater impacts than mass-Based allocation indicating the significant effect of the allocation approach on life-cycle impact estimates.
Recommended Citation
I. E. Paschalidou et al., "Effect of Mass and Economic Allocation on Tellurium Life Cycle Impacts," SME Annual Conference and Expo 2023, Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, Jan 2023.
Department(s)
Mining Engineering
Second Department
Materials Science and Engineering
International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
978-171387236-8
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2025 Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2023
