Life cycle assessment of the rolling process of thin aluminum sheets.

Primary aluminum recycling has been demonstrated to play a pivotal role in sustainable manufacturing. Nevertheless, among all the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies existing in the literature on aluminum products, very few focus on the rolling stage. In this work, LCA of two semi-finished products, plates and coated strips, made of AA8011 aluminum alloy have been carried out. Inventory data were collected by the Laminazione Sottile plant, except for coil coating data for pharmaceutical caps, which were collected in the Italcoat plant. For both semi-finished products, hot rolling and fusion mostly affect the environmental impact of the manufacturing. Moreover, results show that the substitution of virgin primary aluminum with secondary aluminum results in a remarkable minimization of the environmental impact. Indeed, a 50% reduction of primary aluminum results in about a 70% reduction of GWP to produce AA 8011 coated strips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]