Location: ZA - South Africa
The dataset describes the production of cement (CEM II/A-L)
CEM II/A-L is a blended cement that is made by partially replacing 6-20% of Portland cement with limestone.
Portland cement production involves the chemical transformation of raw materials: calcium oxides; silica; alumina and iron oxide into various types of cementitious products, by-products and wastes. The Portland cement manufacturing process consists of four main steps: (1) Quarrying of limestone and transportation of raw materials to the processing plant. (2) Preparation of “raw meal” for pyroprocessing (3) Pyroprocessing of raw materials to produce Portland cement clinker using the dry process. (4) Final grinding of the clinker together with inter-grinding with a small proportion of gypsum to produce Portland cement. Steps (1) to (4) are not considered in dataset.
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.