Environmental sustainability of steel active corrosion protection processes

Abstract

The Integrated Product Policy (IPP), one of the most recent initiatives of the European Commission in the field of sustainable products and services development, considers Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as natural tool to provide environmental product declarations and verified environmental labels. The need of transparency of environmental performance is getting more importance also in the field of corrosion protection technology. First results of a Life Cycle Assessment on a 'hot-dip zinc galvanising process' for generic steel products are here reported to present a set of environmental sustainability indicators of that industrial sector and to support the preparation of a document with an environmental declaration. The study has been carried out according to ISO 14040 standard and the system referred to an average process resulting from two Italian medium-size plants (about 12.000 metric tons of galvanised steel per year each). Different frameworks such as poles and pylons for energy transportation have been considered from a cradle-to-grave (eco-profile) point of view, adding up to energy and environmental results also on the basis of the steel product service life within different corrosion scenarios.