Dynamic material flow analysis of zinc resources in China

Lingyu Yan, Anjian Wang, Qishen Chen and Jianwu Li

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2013, vol. 75, issue C, 23-31

Abstract: Zinc is one of the most widely applied nonferrous metals in China. Study on the applications and recurrent situation of zinc resources is of great strategic importance for the sustainable development of China's economy. In this paper, a dynamic material flow analysis (MFA) method has been adopted to analyze quantificationally zinc resources in China, as well as to analyze and predict the quantity of zinc product scrap and their recycling situation. The weighted average method was applied to calculate average lifetimes of six major zinc products in China. The average lifetimes of battery, zinc oxide, zinc die-casting alloys, zinc material products, galvanized zinc and brass are 0.17, 5.3, 11.1, 12, 21 and 30 years, respectively. Assuming the lifetime of zinc product group obeys the Weibull distribution and the consumption of zinc products varies linearly with time, the future consumption and scrap generation of zinc products will increase continuously. It is expected that they would increase from 49% to 76% during 2004–2020, respectively. Assuming the recycling rate remains unchanged with time, the zinc old scrap index, both the theoretical and actual values, would continue increasing in China. The values are expected to reach 0.402 and 0.076 by 2020, respectively. Therefore, the regeneration resource of depreciated zinc is actually insufficient in China. According to the scenario analysis, the actual value of old scrap indexes is positively correlated with the recycling rate of zinc products. Because galvanized products are the largest consumption area of zinc products in China, the influence of their recycling rate on old scrap index is obviously larger than other zinc products. Through the analysis, this paper suggests that the increase of the recycling rate of zinc products could not only improve to a certain degree China's relative shortage of zinc resources, but greatly relive the supply pressure of zinc in the world.

Keywords: Zinc resource; Life cycle; Dynamic material flow analysis; Renewable resources recovery; Old scrap index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344913000608
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:recore:v:75:y:2013:i:c:p:23-31

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2013.03.004

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().