Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 478–485

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Journal of Cleaner Production

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Environmental impact of cement production: detail of the different processes and

cement plant variability evaluation
C. Chen a, b, G. Habert a, *, Y. Bouzidi b, A. Jullien c
a
Université Paris-Est, Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées, 58 Bd Lefebvre, 75732 Paris Cedex 15, France
b
UTT, Institut Charles Delaunay, FRE CNRS 2848, laboratoire CREIDD, 12 rue Marie Curie, BP 2060, 10010 Troyes, France
c
Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées/DDGC, Route de Bouaye, BP 4129 44341 Bouguenais, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study evaluates the environmental impact of the cement production and its variations between
Received 7 May 2009 different cement plants, using Life Cycle Impact Assessment. For that purpose, details of the cement
Received in revised form production processes are investigated in order to show the respective part of raw materials preparation
29 November 2009
and clinker production using environmental impacts calculated with CML01 indicators. For the kiln
Accepted 18 December 2009
Available online 4 January 2010
emission data, a European pollutant emission register for French intensive industries is used to quantify
the variability of indicators between cement plants. For the CML01 indicators that are controlled by kiln
emissions, some of them (i.e. global warming, photochemical oxidation) show variations between
Keywords:
Cement cement plants between 20 and 30%, as for other (i.e. acidification, eutrophication, terrestrial ecotoxicity)
Environmental impact variations are greater than 40% due to the lack of accurate measurements on both pollutant content and
Life cycle assessment annual flow. Finally, a normalisation, using Western Europe yearly emissions is performed and permits to
Data robustness highlight among all the CML01 indicators which ones are the main impacts for the cement production.
Abiotic depletion, global warming, acidification and marine ecotoxicity are the four identified impacts.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction and therefore disallows a unique life cycle to be defined. However,

The Portland cement manufacturing industry is under close
scrutiny these days because of the large volumes of CO2 emitted.
Actually this industrial sector is thought to represent 5–7% of the
total CO2 anthropogenic emissions (Hendricks et al., 1998; Hum-
phreys and Mahasenan, 2002). Therefore numerous studies have
been done to evaluate CO2 emissions and energy consumption
(Capros et al., 2001; CIF, 2003; Gartner, 2004). Other cement
emissions such as SO2 emissions have also been analysed (Josa
et al., 2004, 2007) using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. This
method refers to international standard (International Stand-
ardisation Organisation (ISO), 2006) and has been applied to the
building sector since 1990 (Fava, 2006). It is now a widely used
methodology (Asif et al., 2005; Ortiz et al., 2009; Blengini, 2009).
The inclusion of every stage of the process or product’s life cycle is
fundamental to this analysis. In some cases, however, a full life cycle
(cradle to grave) analysis is not pertinent and the analysis must end
at an intermediate stage (cradle to gate). This is the case, when one
analyses cement production, which has multiple specific applica-
tions in civil engineering (beams, pillars, pavements, bridges, etc.)
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ33 1 40 43 53 26; fax: þ33 1 40 43 54 93.
E-mail address: guillaume.habert@lcpc.fr (G. Habert).
any partial analysis is useful for the further construction of
complete life cycles for specific cement end-products (beams,
columns, pavements, etc). Reliable results on cement production
impacts are therefore needed for studies on a larger scale, dealing
with concrete (material scale) (Flower and Sanjayan, 2007) up to
structure design (infrastructure scale) (Kawai et al., 2005).
Attempts have already been done to evaluate the reliability of the
results of LCA method on cements (Josa et al., 2004, 2007; von Bahr
et al., 2003). For instance, a comparison between inventory data
from different countries with different system boundaries has been
evaluated (Josa et al., 2004). A specific attention was paid to take
into account variations based on the changes in boundaries. Scat-
tering can also be associated with the data quality, as data are often
aggregated from different industries with the assumption that
companies work in a perfectly homogeneous way (Reap et al.,
2008a). Von Bahr and co-authors have studied the variability of
three types of emissions (Dust, NOx, and SO2) from 1993 to 1999 in
6 different cement plants (von Bahr et al., 2003). They show an
improvement of processes with time as well as a large variability
between cement plants. In the French cement industrial sector,
a CEM I Life cycle Inventory has been recently published (ATILH,
2002). Although it represents the mean value for the 30 cement
plants that cover all the material country demand, no uncertainty

0959-6526/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2009.12.014
 C. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 478–485 479

analysis is provided, whereas variability between these industries
due to different technologies or industrial practice must exist.
Finally, no known studies have been done to quantify discrepancies
of data sources within CEM I in LCA literature.
The objective of this study is then to evaluate the environmental
impacts of the French cement production using LCA and to quantify,
when possible the variations between different cement plants. The
cement production system is defined as all inclusive processes
related to the production of 1 kg of CEM I. Different literature
sources are used to quantify data variability, among which the
European Pollutant Emission Register (EPER) of each emission
intensive industry. Using these emissions data, the CML01 frame-
work is used to calculate environmental burdens of French cement
production and its subsystem contributions in order to highlight
specific variations at country scale.
2. Materials and methods
often close to the cement plant, transports are not considered for
the raw materials (Fig. 1). The second process (S2) is the production
of clinker at the cement plant. It includes a fine mixing of the raw
materials and the cement kiln process (Fig. 1). This burning process
has not been detailed but a review of the different kiln types and
their relative environmental impacts in term of energy used can be
find for instance in (Bastier, 2000; Worrell et al., 2000). During this
burning process the impacts of fuels production have also been
evaluated except for alternative fuels that have not been included in
the system as they have been considered as waste from other
industries. Transports are considered for all the fuels (alternative
and primary fuels). The third process (S3) is the production of the
cement which includes the grinding of clinker and its mixing with
gypsum (Fig. 1). For all the processes, the materials needed for the
construction of the industrial installation are considered and
divided by the expected life time of the cement plant (50 years with
a production of 340 000 t/yr).

2.1. Functional unit and system boundaries 2.2. Generic data for cement production

The functional unit used in the study is the production of 1 kg
of ordinary Portland cement (CEM I). This type of cement has
been chosen as it is composed with 95% of the primary reactive
compound of cement that is clinker. All the other cements (CEM
II and III) are made with a partial substitution of clinker by
supplementary cementitious materials that are considered to
have a lower environmental impact according to current LCA
allocation hypotheses for waste evaluation (Kawai et al., 2005).
As supplementary cementitious materials represent most of the
time 20–30% (SFIC, 2007) of cement with mineral additions their
impacts in comparison with CEMI are slightly lower. Note that
only a very small part of French cement (0.5%) contains a very
small amount of clinker (SFIC, 2007). Therefore focusing on CEM I
is a way to study the type of cement that has the highest envi-
ronmental impact, with respect to all the other cements
produced.
The studied system has been separated into three main
processes as shown in Fig. 1. The first one (S1) is the extraction and
preparation of the raw materials in the quarry. As the quarry is
Primary data on cement production were collected from different
sources, whereas all these data are denoted as ‘generic’ because only
a mean value of each emission is provided by the literature. Inputs
data for the different sub-systems (S1–S3 Fig. 1) have been gathered
by the French cement union ATILH (ATILH, 2002) and are presented
in Table 1a. The ATILH direct emissions from subsystem S2 are pre-
sented in Table 1b. They are set as a reference for comparison with
the direct output data built for this study and presented in the next
section. Finally additional generic data for energy, materials and
transport including all upstream products and processes are taken
from Ecoinvent (Kellenberger et al., 2007).
2.3. Specific data and variability of direct emission between cement
plants
Exploring the variability of the environmental impacts gener-
ated by different cement plants requires taking into account the
local cement production impacts rather than a mean production as
Table 1a
Input data for the production of 1 kg of French cement CEM I. Transport is essentially
the transport of the fuels as the extraction site of raw materials is close to the cement
kiln. Data from ATILH (ATILH, 2002).

Process (per kg cement) Raw materials Clinker Cement final

prod.(S1) prod. (S2) prod. (S3)
Raw materials
Limestone (kg) 1.22
Clay (kg) 0.31
Gypsum (kg) 1  12
Waste (kg)
Water (l) 0.2
Grinding aids (kg) 2  104

Energy
Hard coal (kg) 9.8  103
Electricity (kWh) 7  102 6.5  102
Petroleum coke (kg) 4.5  102
Gaz (MJ) 2.3  102
Heavy fuel oil (kg) 1.6  102
Light distillates (kg) 1.3  102
Waste (MJ) 1.2

Transport
Boat (kg km) 97.7
Train (kg km) 1.22
Truck 28 t (kg km) 40.38 13.36 3.12

Cement plant installation

Rotary kiln (unit) 6.3  1012
Rest of cement plant (unit) 5.4  1011
Fig. 1. Cement CEM I system.
480 C. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 478–485

Table 1b 2007; DRIRE, 2003; AEPI, 2001; Lafarge, 2009). Then, 15 cement
Summary of the main substances emitted to air (in kg) on the cement plant for the plants were selected and the results are available in Annex A. Actually
production of 1 kg of cement CEM I.
very few cement plants are producing only CEM I. Therefore, it has
Air emissions (kg/kg cement) This studya ATILHb been chosen to use data from cement plants that were not producing
Mean Std exclusively CEM I in order to have more data. However, this choice
Chlorine (Cl) 2.9  106 5.2  106 induces an additional uncertainty, as the results are to be compared
Hydrochloric acid (HCl) 8.8  106 3.5  106 4.0  106 with ATILH data for CEM I. The consequences due to the construction
Fluorine and inorganic 1.5  107 5.7  108 1.0  106 method of our database are considered in the discussion section.
compounds
Mean and standard deviation for emissions related to the
Benzene (C6H6) 3.3  106 1.1  108
Carbon monoxide (CO) 1.4  103
production of 1 kg of cement for the 15 selected cement plants are
Methane (CH4) 2.0  105 presented in Table 1b and recorded as data from this study. Hence,
Non-methane volatile organic 4.5  105 2.7  105 5.0  105 the only variations studied here derive from direct emissions of
compounds (NMVOC) cement plants due to emission variations within the EPER database.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 6.9  101 1.4  101 8.1  101
This study does not include any variation of the input data for raw
Mercury and derivates (Hg) 3.4  108 2.2  108 1.2  108
Nitrogen oxides (NOX) 1.2  103 3.2  104 1.5  103 materials and energy consumption. Such an approach has been
(eq. NO2) done in numerous studies that deal with technology efficiency of
Sulphur oxides (SOX) 8.2  104 4.7  104 5.8  104 cement plant (Liu et al., 1995; Engin and Ari, 2005; Voisin et al.,
(eq. SO2) 2008; Huntzinger and Eatmon, 2009).
Nitrous oxide (N2O) 9.7  106 1.7  105
Ammonia (NH3) 7.2  104 5.1  104 4.7  105
Particulates 4.9  104 4.0  105 2.4. Impact assessment method
Copper and derivates (Cu) 2.8  107 1.7  109 3.9  108
Manganese and derivates (Mn) 2.8  107 8.8  108 4.6  108 In literature two main schools of methods for impact assessment
Nickel and derivates (Ni) 1.6  107 9.7  108 8.3  108
are found: (a) Pressure-oriented methods (e.g. CML (Guinée et al.,
Zinc and derivates (Zn) 9.8  107 7.5  107 1.6  108
Antimony (Sb) 1.8  109 1.3  109 3.9  108 2002) and EDIP (Hauschild and Wenzel, 1998)) that restrict quanti-
Tin (Sn) 7.3  109 3.2  109 1.7  108 tative modelling to relatively early stages in the cause-effect chain to
Cobalt (Co) 1.4  108 1.4  108 limit uncertainties and (b) Damage oriented methods (e.g. Eco-
cadnium (Cd) 2.6  108 1.1  108 1.4  108 indicator 99 – called Eco99 – (Goedkoop and Spriensma, 2001), EPS
Arsenic (As) 3.2  108 8.0  109
Chromium (Cr) 6.4  108 2.4  108
(Steen, 1999) or IMPACT2002þ (Jolliet et al., 2003)) that try to model
Lead (Pb) 2.2  107 1.3  107 1.1  107 the cause–effect chain up to the endpoint, or damage, sometimes
Titanium (Ti) 4.0  108 with high uncertainties. In this study a pressure-oriented method
Vanadium (V) 4.6  108 has been chosen to reduce this part of uncertainty on results. The
Selenium (Se) 1.3  108
baseline methods of the latest CML guidelines (Guinée et al., 2002),
Tellurium (Te) 1.1  108
that is CML01, has been preferred to perform impact assessment
a
Data for This study are from (EPER, 2008; Holcim, 2009; Calcia, 2008; Barla, because this method is the primary base for the construction of the
2008; Braun, 2007; DRIRE, 2003; AEPI, 2001; Lafarge, 2009).
b
Data for ATILH are from (ATILH, 2002).
French environmental standards on building construction materials,
the NF P 01-010 standard (AFNOR & French Standardisation Agency,
the one proposed by ATILH (ATILH, 2002). The direct emissions 2004). Impact categories such as abiotic depletion, global warming,
from cement plant associated with the production of 1 kg of cement ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidation and acidification are
were obtained from the European Pollutant Emission Register calculated with similar methodology in CML01 and NF P 01-010. In
(EPER) (EPER, 2008). EPER gathers yearly direct air emissions, from NF P 01-010, ecotoxicology and eutrophication categories are poorly
large and medium-sized industrial facilities which are listed in calculated and CML measurement method gives more accurate
Annex I of the IPPC Directive. This register is representative of modelling (Ventura et al., 2004). All calculations for this study have
French production as it includes 26 out of the 30 French cement been performed with the life cycle assessment tool Simapro (PRé,
plants. It was established by a European Commission Decision in 2008), whereas the Ecoinvent data implemented in this tool has
July the 17th, 2000 (European Commission, 2000), which is based been picked up when necessary as explained in Section 2.2.
on the Article 15(3) of the Council Directive 96/61/EC concerning
integrated pollution prevention and control (Concil of the European 2.5. Impact normalisation
Union, 1996). EPER data can be considered as reliable because the
quality of the EPER emissions data has been checked at local, Finally a normalisation has been done. It is an optional step in LCA
regional and national level before the data were included in EPER (International Standardisation Organisation (ISO), 2006). The
(EPER, 2008). Besides, as the aim of EPER as explained on the procedure provides the decision maker with a measure of the
website (EPER, 2008) is ‘‘to provide scientists, local authorities and characterisation scores for each impact category of a product system,
policy makers with a consistent, Europe-wide emissions database’’, divided by the total impact of a reference situation for the same
using these data for scientific purpose seems therefore justified. impact category (Heijungs and Hofstetter, 1996). This part of the LCA
However, EPER database only gathers yearly emissions from procedure is the subject of many discussions and few methods seem
cement plants that have then to be divided by the yearly cement to be in high adequacy (Reap et al., 2008b). Total yearly emissions for
production of each plant to determine the emission associated with 1 a reference year in a reference region are often used to perform
kg of cement. Furthermore, the cement plants included in EPER do normalisation. In this study, the emissions from all activities in
not produce exclusively CEM I. Therefore a detailed study of the Western Europe in 1995 are used (Huijbregts et al., 2003). To compile
different cement plants has first been conducted (1) to find out their emission data for Western Europe, Huijbregts et al. have used
yearly cement production (Holcim, 2009; Calcia, 2008; Barla, 2008; extrapolation method based on gross domestic product converted to
Braun, 2007; DRIRE, 2003; AEPI, 2001; Lafarge, 2009) and (2) to international dollars using purchasing power parity rates (World
select the cement plants that produce only CEM I or CEM II/A (i.e. Bank, 2000) for emissions where information was not available for
containing 75–85% of clinker) and no other products such as CEM III all countries involved but only for some of them. They are the most
or asphalt products (Holcim, 2009; Calcia, 2008; Barla, 2008; Braun, recent available data for Western Europe impacts calculated with
 C. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 478–485 481

CML01 method. Infinite time horizon has been chosen for toxicity
potential indicators (Huijbregts et al., 2003). Considering such
releasing potential for normalisation, induces high impacts for
European yearly emissions, and therefore provides the lowest envi-
ronmental impact when cement production is divided by them.

3. Results

During this study the same set of environmental indicators has

been used (CML 2001) but depending on the studied aspect all the
indicators have not been used. Actually, the study of the different
sub-systems of the cement production (Section 3.1) has been per-
formed for all indicators; whereas the study of the impact varia-
tions due to the differences in cement plant emissions (Section 3.2)
has been done only on indicators that are controlled by the direct
emissions of the cement plants. Finally, normalisation (Section 3.3)
permits to highlight among all the CML01 indicators which ones are
the main impacts for the cement production.

3.1. Influence of the different sub-systems on the environmental

impact

Impacts assessment of the different cement production

processes (S1–S3) are presented in Table 2. They have been calcu-
lated with input data from ATILH (Table 1a) and output data from
the mean values calculated in this study (Table 1b). For many of the
CML01 indicators, Fig. 2a shows that the clinker production process
(S2) is the main contributor. Cement final production (S3) and raw
material preparation (S1) do not have large environmental impacts
compared to the clinker production (S2). The only indicators which
Fig. 2. Environmental impact assessment of the different cement production sub-
contributions are not negligible are the ecotoxicity indicators, systems. Indice 100 is for the complete cement production system (S1 þ S2 þ S3). (a)
essentially ecotoxicity related to freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Relative contribution of the three main sub-systems (S1, S2, S3). (b) Relative contri-
The study of the detailed impacts of the clinker production process bution, within the clinker production subsystem (S2), of the different processes
(S2) shows that depending on the indicators, environmental involved. Input data are from ATILH (ATILH, 2002) and output data are from (EPER,
2008; Holcim, 2009; Calcia, 2008; Barla, 2008; Braun, 2007; DRIRE, 2003; AEPI, 2001;
impacts are due to the direct kiln emissions or to the production of
Lafarge, 2009) and are calculated in this study (see text for details).
the primary fuels (Fig. 2b). For the toxicity related to human
ecosystems both processes are involved. Transport and industry the raw materials needed for cement production. This is due to the
installation do not have a significant contribution to the indicators calculation method (Guinée et al., 2002) that considers stock of
presented in this study. However, it has to be noted that due to natural bulk resources such as sand, gravel, limestone or clays as
a lack of data and the complexity of the different processes infinite. Different results would be obtained with a calculation
involved, no maintenance has been considered which considerably mode including the local stock availability of resources rather than
reduce the amount of materials needed for the installation of the a global one (Habert et al., 2009).
cement plant. Impacts for cement installation could be higher if
maintenance of kiln and grinding machine were taken into account.
However, even if they were a hundred time higher than they 3.2. Evaluation of impact variations due to the differences in
effectively are in this calculation (which means a complete change cement plant emissions
in the installation every 6 months) they would still be negligible.
Finally, it is interesting to note that the abiotic depletion indicator is Impacts assessment for the production of 1 kg of cement with
controlled exclusively by the fuel production impacts and not by the different database is presented in Table 3. In the previous

Table 2
Environmental impacts expressed per kg of cement produced for the different sub-systems according to CML01 guidelines, with input data from ATILH (ATILH, 2002) and
output data from (EPER, 2008; Holcim, 2009; Calcia, 2008; Barla, 2008; Braun, 2007; DRIRE, 2003; AEPI, 2001; Lafarge, 2009) and calculated in this study (see text for details).

Impact category Raw material Clinker production (S2)

preparation (S1)
Primary fuel Fuel Cement plant Direct kiln Cement final
production transport disposal emissions production (S3)
Abiotic depletion (kg sb eq.) 1.76  104 2.15  103 4.91  103 1.31  106 0 6.12  105
Global warming (GWP100) (kg CO2 eq.) 2.58  102 4.66  102 7.49  103 1.99  104 6.93  101 9.06  103
Ozone layer depletion (ODP) (kg (CFC-11 eq) 3.60  109 3.70  108 9.58  1010 1.21  1011 0 4.65  1010
Human toxicity (kg 1.4-db eq.) 7.65  103 3.04  102 1.32  103 2.92  104 3.08  102 5.62v103
Freshwater aquatic ecotox. (kg 1.4-DB eq.) 1.28  103 3.23  103 2.92  104 4.86  105 2.11  104 8.35  104
Marine aquatic ecotoxicity (kg l 0.4-db eq.) 4.41 30.70 1.06 1.90 101 5.35 6.88
Terrestrial ecotoxicity (kg 1.4-DB eq.) 7.05  105 2.57  104 1.43  105 1.53  106 1.06  103 1.10  104
Photochemical oxidation (kg C2H4 eq.) 4.06  106 2.91  105 1.12  106 6.75  108 7.46  105 2.22  106
Acidification (kg SO2 eq.) 1.31  104 5.05  104 4.96  105 1.22  106 2.75  103 5.48  105
Eutrophication (kg PO24 eq.) 2.48  105 4.90  105 1.04  105 1.79  107 4.13  104 6.47  106
482 C. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 478–485

Table 3
Environmental impacts expressed per kg of cement produced according to CML01 guidelines.

Impact category This study ATILH Normalisation

Mean Std. Dev.

Abiotic depletion (kg Sb eq.) 243  103 n.d. 2.43  103 1.48  1010
Global warming (GWP100) (kg CO2 q.) 7.82  101 1.41  101 8.99  101 4.81  1012
Ozone layer depletion (ODP) (kg (CFC-11 e.) 4.20  108 n.d. 4.20  108 8.33  107
Human toxicity (kg 1.4-DB eq.) 7.60  102 6.05  103 5.95  102 7.58  1012
Freshwater aquatic ecotox. (kg 1.4-DB eq.) 5.89  103 8.54  105 5.87  103 5.05  1011
Marine aquatic ecotoxicity (kg 1.4-DB eq.) 48.60 4.61 85.2 1.14  1014
Terrestrial ecotoxicity (kg 1.4-DB eq.) 1.51  103 6.46 104 8.58  104 4.72  1010
Photochemical oxidation (kg C2H4 eq.) 1.11  104 3.17  105 1.02  104 8.26  109
Acidification (kg SO2 eq.) 3.49  103 1.54  103 2.24  104 2.0  1010
Eutrophication (kg PO24 eq.) 5.04  104 2.2  104 2.97  104 2.73  1010

section it has been shown that the direct kiln emissions were the
principal contributor to 5 main impact categories: global warming,
terrestrial ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidation, acidification and
eutrophication (Fig. 2b). As variations between the two databases
come exclusively from direct kiln emissions, it seems pertinent to
compare the results only for these five indicators. Mean value and
standard deviation calculated with our dataset are then compared
to impacts calculated with ATILH data for these five indicators. For
all impact categories, results with ATILH cement plant emissions
are within the variations of impacts calculated with our database as
shown in Fig. 3. This validates as a first approximation our dataset.
Fig. 3 also shows that environmental burdens for cement produc-
tion with data from our study are greater than these calculated with
ATILH for most impact categories except for Global warming. The
presence of CH4 in ATILH and not in our database induces higher
impacts for global warming. The difference comes also from
registration value difference for the different substances (Table 1b).
For instance CO2 values are calculated at 0.675 kg per kg of CEM I
with our dataset and registered at 0.807 kg for 1 kg of cement
produced in ATILH. Fig. 3 shows also that there is an important
variability of results. For some impact categories such as terrestrial
ecotoxicity, eutrophication and acidification, standard deviations
are close to their mean value (Table 3). If such variations derive
from the variability between cement plants, it means that envi-
ronmental impacts of cement strongly depend on the technology
used to produce it and that important improvement could be
obtained by using the best available technology. But these
variations could also originate from data inconsistency and just
highlight the fact that cement impact for these indicators are not
reliable. These questions are discussed in the discussion section.
3.3. Analysis of the main impacts of French cement production
As explained above, the normalisation method that has been
chosen divides each environmental impact of CEM I by the total
yearly environmental impact of Western Europe in 1995. Impact
categories can then be compared assuming uncertainties and
hypothesis on the normalisation factors from EU-15 (Huijbregts
et al., 2003). Fig. 4 shows the results when all normalised impacts
have been compared to the global warming assumed to represent
100% of impacts. It has to be noted that the scale for Fig. 4 is log-
arithmic. It is then obvious that, normalisation seems to affect four
main categories: Abiotic depletion, global warming, ecotoxicity
related to marine ecosystems and acidification. As shown in Fig. 2b,
abiotic depletion is controlled by the fuel production and is then
somehow related to the energy demand for cement plant when this
energy is not supplied by alternative fuels such as by-products from
other industries (Cf Fig. 1, primary fuel production). Impacts like
global warming and acidification are essentially due to direct
emissions from the cement kiln (cf. Fig. 2b). Finally impacts like
ecotoxicity of marine environment are controlled at 57, 20 and 13%
by respectively fuel production, direct emissions from cement kiln
and final cement preparation. The remaining part of impacts is
shared between transport and raw material production. The
pollutants related to these emissions can be identified with the
detail of the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) usually not shown in LCA
studies but listed by the SIMAPRO outputs. In this study, impacts
related to global warming are due nearly exclusively to CO2, those
for acidification are mainly due to SOx (34%), NH3 (30%), N20 (17%),

Fig. 3. Environmental impact assessment of cement production (S1 þ S2 þ S3) from

two datasets (This study (EPER, 2008; Holcim, 2009; Calcia, 2008; Barla, 2008; Braun, Fig. 4. Environmental impact assessment of cement production normalised with EU-
2007; DRIRE, 2003; AEPI, 2001; Lafarge, 2009), ATILH (ATILH, 2002)). Standard varia- 15 emissions from 1995 (Heijungs and Hofstetter, 1996), and compared with indice 100
tions for the different indicators are presented for This study. Indice 100 is for mean ¼ Global warming impact. The gray band represents uncertainties. Note that the scale
impacts of this study. is logarithmic.
 C. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 478–485
SO2 (13%) and NOx (6%) and impacts for marine ecotoxicity are
essentially related to the emission of Fluorine and its inorganic
compounds (54%), barite and Barium (34%) and many heavy metals
such as Vanadium (3%). These pollutant emissions are in accor-
dance with European commission directive (IPPC, 2001) that
includes a list of the main air-polluting substances to be taken into
account in cement manufacture. NOx and SO2 are the main ones;
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) polychlorinated dibenzodiox-
ins, dibenzofurans (PCDDs and PCDFs) and carbon monoxide are
cited. Metals, HF and HCl are also considered to be mitigated.
4. Discussion
The great variability of results with our database needs to be
asked for. Actually, it is important to know if these variations are
due to variability between cement plants associated with different
technologies or if they are due to uncertainty of values imple-
mented in the database. In this section all the different uncertainty
causes are evaluated.
Variations can be at first attributed to the uncertainty on cement
production. Actually in our study two datasets have been matched,
the first one with the total emissions for each cement plant (EPER
data) and the second one with values of cement production for each
industry. An inadequacy between these databases would involve
errors on emission per kg of cement for each industry. In our study,
the yearly cement production represents the maximum cement
production of each plant which contains CEM I and CEM II.
However, producing CEM II involves smaller clinker production,
than for CEM I and lower direct emissions. It is then obvious that
the cement production used to build our database is higher than
the CEM I production. However, for most of the category of impacts,
results with this database are higher than those found using ATILH
direct emissions which would mean that EPER data have been
divided by lower production value than effective value. The
contrary is expected. Another argument to show that the uncer-
tainty on CEM I production evaluation cannot be the explanation
for large variability on environmental impacts is the fact that there
is an important difference between variation for global warming
and for acidification. Actually if variations bring a poor evaluation of
cement production by adding CEM I and CEM II, there should not be
large difference between impact categories, and especially between
global warming and acidification as similar volume of the released
pollutants are produced (see Annex A). Therefore it can be assumed
that variability does not arise exclusively from uncertainty on
cement production. This, although thought to be a validation of our
database values, shows at least that these values are not less
accurate than ATILH values.
If variability of environmental impacts is not a consequence of
uncertainty on cement production, it can then be emphasised that
variability results from emission registration. The cement
registration guide (ATILH, 2003), used to fill EPER, contains some
uncertainty calculation. Calculation for CO2 emissions are based
on variation in carbon content of coal and argue for 5% of varia-
tion. It is lower than variations registered in Fig. 3. But this
variation does not take into account variation between cement
plants with different technology or variation due to raw material
content nor measurement accuracy. Concerning acidification
impact category, emission accuracy investigations have been
reported in this guide though campaigns (ATILH, 2003).Errors on
the pollutant content measurement in the exhausted gas is of
21%, 34% and 40% respectively for NOx, SO2 and HCl. Therefore,
must be added errors on the annual quantity emitted due to flow
measures uncertainty. When flow is measured continuously,
variations (mean) are equal to 24%, 37% and 43% for NOx, SO2 and
HCl respectively. Further, these ’mean’ variations are 10% higher
483
when flow is measured discontinuously (ATILH, 2003). Such
variations could explain standard deviation values in our database
as they can explain large variation for acidification indicator.
Besides, no data are presented for heavy metals and fluorine
emissions in the cement registration guide. An important source
of variation seems then to be due to the emission register. But
still, note that this would mean that industries have registered
higher value in the European pollutant register, than the value
referred in ATILH registration.
Finally part of the variations should be due to the specificity of
technology and industrial practice of each cement plant. Due to
larger other errors, it seems very difficult to assess to this value with
the methodology developed in this study. The variations of envi-
ronmental impacts (i.e. acidification, eutrophication and terrestrial
ecotoxicity) seem then to be predominantly due to difficulties to
perform accurate measurements on both pollutant content and
annual flow, which strongly reduces the pertinence of using the
mean environmental impact for these indicators.
5. Conclusion
This study focused on different aspects of the environmental
evaluation of cement production. Firstly a detail of the different
sub-systems of the cement production permitted to show
a geographic localisation of impacts between the sites involved in
cement production. A particular attention has been paid to show
the difference between direct impacts from the cement kiln and
indirect impacts such as those related to fuel production. This
distinction is fundamental to address pertinent mitigation poli-
cies. Secondly an evaluation of the variation between different
cement kilns has been done. This study has shown that for global
warming variations are close to 20%. For other indicators, uncer-
tainties due to difficulties of accurate measurements on both
pollutant content and annual flow induce large variation and
reduce the pertinence of the final result. This is the case for
terrestrial ecotoxicity, acidification and eutrophication. Finally
a normalisation to the European yearly emission allowed for
comparison of the impact relative importance for the different
indicators. Four main indicators have been selected: Global
warming, abiotic depletion, acidification and ecotoxicity related to
marine ecosystems. Among them proposed value for global
warming either from ATILH or from this study seems to be
accurate; however there is strong uncertainty on acidification
values which does not permit to use the results to perform reli-
able environmental evaluation of cement production. For the two
other main environmental impact (Marine ecotoxicity and abiotic
depletion), they are not controlled by the direct emission from
cement plants and impact variation have not been evaluated in
this study. This would need further study to evaluate the accuracy
of environmental impacts for these indicators.
Acknowledgment
The authors wish to thank the French competitiveness cluster
Advancity and the Region Ile de France for their financial help and
the ‘‘Association Technique de l’Industrie des Liants Hydrauliques’’
(ATILH) for providing the Life Cycle Inventory of CEM I.
Annex A. Pollutant emissions from the 15 French cement
plant evaluated in this study. Pollutant emission data are
from EPER (EPER, 2008) and cement production data are from
(Holcim, 2009; Calcia, 2008; Barla, 2008; Braun, 2007; DRIRE,
2003; AEPI, 2001; Lafarge, 2009).
 484
Cement plant production [t/yr] 1 500 000 600 000 800 000 600 000 380 000 775 000 240 000 1 100 000 410 000 384 000 900 000 810 000 2 000 000 1 000 000
Air emission [kg/yr]
Chlorine (Cl) 666 110 57 64 631 6.39  103 5.03  103 662 5.2  103 2.01  103
Hydrochloric acid (HCl) 1.60  104 1.0  104
Fluorine and inorganic 183 1 152 140

C. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 478–485

compounds
Benzene (C6H6) 2.0 103 2.98  103
Non-methane volatile 4.39  104 3.47  104 3.50  104 5.22  104 4.60  104 3.07  104
organic compound
(NMVOC)
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 1.02  106 3.12  105 5.64  105 4.50  105 2.91  105 5.95  105 8.36  105 3.12  105 3.38  105 4.57  105 9.35  105 6.93  105
Mercury and derivates (Hg) 110 11 16 11 65 11 14 40
Nitrogen oxides (NOx) 1.54  106 6.38  105 8.34  105 5.84  105 4.23  105 1.20  106 4.14  105 9.84  105 4.53  105 6.50  105 7.85  105 1.17  106 2.23  106 1.38  106
(eq. NO2)
Sulphur oxides (SOx) 1.01  106 2.69  105 9.95  105 1.65  105 1.66  106 3.93  105
(eq. SO2)
Nitrous oxide (N2O) 1.29  104 1.02  104
Ammonia (NH3) 1.44  106
Particulates 1.85  105
Copper and derivates (Cu) 172
Manganese and derivates (Mn) 233
Nickel and derivates (Ni) 67 97 67
Zinc and derivates (Zn) 2.75  103 202
Antimony (Sb) 268
Tin (Sn) 1.4 3
Cobalt (Co) 4.5 13
Cadmium (Cd) 25 22 28 13 5.2
Arsenic (As) 25 25
Chromium (Cr) 127
Lead (Pb) 304 324
 C. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 478–485 485

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