Page 270 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

260 G. A. da Silva et al.
Table 4 Simplified LCI for Itaipu power plant (UF = 1 MWh) (Ribeiro 2003)
Unit (/FU) Total Construction Operation (100-year)
Material resources consumption
Water kg 8.90E+00 7.16E+00 1.74E+00
Sand kg 4.12E-01 4.12E-01 x
Basalt kg 5.47E+00 5.47E+00 x
Calcite kg 4.86E-01 4.70E-01 1.62E-02
Iron Ore kg 1.66E-01 1.05E-01 6.10E-02
Earth kg 3.05E+00 3.05E+00 x
Energetic resources consumption
Coal MJ 1.65335 1.038186 0.615164
Hydroelectricity MJ 1.46E+00 1.36E+00 9.61E-02
Natural gas MJ 0.285592 0.23958 0.045512
Oil MJ 5.4753 4.7862 0.69368
Atmospheric emissions
CH 4 kg 1.32E-01 4.50E-04 1.32E-01
CO kg 1.12E-01 7.12E-02 4.08E-02
CO 2 kg 1.56E+00 4.45E-01 1.12E+00
Particulate kg 2.49E-02 1.96E-02 5.32E – 03
NOx kg 2.98E-03 2.71E-03 2.70E-04
SOx kg 3.76E-03 2.10E-03 1.66E-03
Nonmaterial burdens
Land use m 2 1.52E-01 6.64E-04 1.52E-01

aspects—size, capability, age, technological level, construction material, and
others.
In order to check Itaipu LCI values together with other hydropower studies,
Table 5 presents a comparison with some international experiences.
These data evidence that even with a large variability between the different
studies most of the results are inside the same order of magnitude. However, in the
comparison of the results for each environmental burden, it is possible to identify a
clear environmental performance advantage of Itaipu among the other hydropower
plants. This prevalence can be explained by the economic scale of the venture—
due to the great capacity factor, the plant generates a huge amount of energy for
each unit of capital investment. This assumption must be taken with care, since the
studies used in this comparison were developed with different objectives and
methodologies and, most of them, were not full LCIs. The environmental gains of
Itaipu are still more evident on the energy pay-back, parameter which measures the
ratio between the energy output and input.

4.5.3 Time horizon sensitiveness

Time horizon is one of the important definitions of the study once the environ-
mental burdens of construction were calculated proportionally to the energy