Life Cycle Assessment of a nanoTiO2 glazed steel panel

Titanium dioxide is one of the most important and common photocatalyst because of its outstanding efficiency (even under weak solar irradiation), compatibility with a large number of materials and good stability. With the development of TiO2 nanomaterials, its uses ranges over a variety of fields such as functional coating photoelectrolysis, photocatalysis, dye sensitized solar cells, gas sensor, optical fibers, electrochromic material for display devices, biomedical fields, etcThe present study concerns the ecodesign of industrial scale up of nanoTiO2 glazed steel panel production performed by LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) methodology. The functional unit chosen for this study is 1 m2 of steel panel (size 1000 mm x 1000 mm x 1 mm) on which is applied glaze funzionalized with TiO2 nanoparticles. The system boundaries of the entire life-cycle include production, distribution/installation, use and end of life phases, thus obtaining “a cradle to the grave” overview. The LCA study has been performed using the SimaPro7.3.3 software and IMPACT 2002+ impact assessment method. The phase of the life cycle with the highest environmental impact is the production (34.42% of the total damage) due to Nitrogen oxides (28.82%) and Particulates < 2.5m (21.16%) air emissions. In particular, the application of white funzionalized glaze step has the higher environmental load (74.2% of the production damage), followed by the grund application step (20.78%) and by the production of the white glaze through a wet grinding of frits mixture and nanoTiO2 solution with alumina balls (3.65%). Regarding the others life cycle phases, the impact of usage step (27.43% of the total damage) is caused by CO2 emissions (52.05%) and the end of life step (13.09% of the total damage) affects with Nitrogen oxide and Particulates, <100nm (indoor) air emissions