Simplified Life Cycle Assessment of a Belt Conveyor

Abstract

This paper presents simplified life cycle assessment (LCA) of a bucket wheel excavator (BWE) belt conveyor. Conducted analysis should provide insight in most of the issues concerning sustainability and environmental properties of the belt conveyor. This paper also provides recommendations for improvement of the belt conveyor based on previous studies and sumarized results based on analysis of complete conveyor presented here. It should also serve as a starting point for complete LCA of the belt conveyor. The aim of complete LCA is to provide more detailed review of environmental properties of the belt conveyor and possible improvements of its energy efficiency, energy and cost savings. All of these analysis should serve as a basis for establishing methodology for LCA studies of any BWE or similar types of belt conveyors.