Location: BR - Brazil
The dataset describes the production of blended Portland cement production with the addition of blast furnace slag in Brazil. There are three types of blended cement in Brazil (CP II) depending on the supplementary cementitious materials (SCM): slag (E), pozzolan (Z) and limestone filler (F). CP II-E has between 6% to 34% of blast furnace slag in mass composition. The three Blended cement types are specified by Brazilian standards (ABNT NBR 11578:1991).
Granulated blast furnace slag is a byproduct of iron production and, when finely ground, it is also a cementing material with hydraulic properties. Slag hydration alone is too slow to give structural properties to cement, but when the slag is combined with Portland cement, the hydration is accelerated due to the extra amount of calcium hydroxide and gypsum. The blast furnace slag is granulated in the iron industry, but usually ground in the cement plant. This extra energy for grinding may be important; however, it is not evaluated due to the lack of specific data of energy consumption per type of cement (electricity consumption in cement plants are informed as a whole).
Undefined unit processes (UPRs) are the unlinked, multi-product activity datasets that form the basis for all of the system models available in the ecoinvent database. This is the way the datasets are obtained and entered into the database by the data providers. These activity datasets are useful for investigating the environmental impacts of a specific activity (gate-to-gate), without regard to its upstream or downstream impacts.