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Analysis of the coupled flows of aluminum and copper in household air conditioning system

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Abstract

The global “copper-poor and aluminum-rich” situation has made the possibility of “copper saving with aluminum” an important topic. This study established a framework for analyzing multiple substances’ coupled flows at the product level based on material flow analysis (MFA), and took the household air conditioning system of the Chinese mainland in 2020 as an example to characterize the coupled flows of aluminum and copper. The results showed that the system consumed 0.69 million tons of aluminum and 2.10 million tons of copper, and discharged 0.17 million tons of aluminum and 0.43 million tons of copper to the environment cumulatively to achieve 13.2 million terajoules of final heat exchanged and serve 1.24 billion square meters during lifetime in mainland China alone, secondary aluminum and copper accounted for only 22.61% and 24.83% of the total consumption, and the in-use stocks increased by 0.19 million tons of aluminum and 0.70 million tons of copper. The external dependency of copper ore was 92.83%, which was significantly higher than the 44.29% of bauxite. The comprehensive utilization efficiency of copper reached 77.88%, which was slightly higher than the 70.80% of aluminum. The conclusion indicates that under the premise of meeting use requirements, promoting “replacing copper with aluminum” can improve the stability and safety of China’s material supply chain, but there is a need to further boost the production efficiency of aluminum in primary production.

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Funding

This work was supported by “The National Key Research and Development Plan of China” (2019YFC0214201) and “The National Natural Science Foundation of China” (42071270).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, No. 19, Xinjiekouwai St, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Guangjie Yu, Jiansu Mao & Yuanyuan Tang

  2. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited, Beijing, 100010, People’s Republic of China

    Siyuan Pei

Authors
  1. Guangjie Yu
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  2. Jiansu Mao
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  3. Yuanyuan Tang
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  4. Siyuan Pei
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Contributions

Guangjie Yu: writing—original draft preparation; writing—reviewing and editing; investigation; visualization

Jiansu Mao: conceptualization, validation and funding acquisition, project administration

Yuanyuan Tang: data curation, methodology, investigation

Siyuan Pei: data curation, methodology, investigation

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jiansu Mao.

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Informed consents were obtained from all the participants prior to the enrollment of this study. Informed consents were obtained from all the participants for publication.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Responsible Editor: Philippe Garrigues

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Highlights

• A new coupling framework of material flow analysis (MFA) was established to characterize multiple substance utilizations in one industry or product.

• A theoretical research path to link material consumption and social service.

• This study calculated aluminum and copper’s overall external dependencies of all stages at the industry level.

• Suggestions were proposed for promoting “copper saving with aluminum.”

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Yu, G., Mao, J., Tang, Y. et al. Analysis of the coupled flows of aluminum and copper in household air conditioning system. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 123643–123656 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30861-6

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