Case Mobile crushing plant

Life cycle assessment of a Mobile crushing plant

Lokotrack LT106 is a compact mobile crushing plant ideal for the demanding primary crushing of hard rock and recycled materials in mobile, stand-alone or multi-stage processes.

The machine is composed of ca. 95% ferrous metals, mostly different steel products, and it weighs around 37,000 kg. Despite the huge mass of the product, the manufacturing stage has only minor overall environmental impacts. Instead, the operation of the machine and the related processes account for most of the environmental impacts.

A life cycle assessment can be used also to study the effects of product development. In the case of the Lokotrack LT106, the effects of improving the duration of wear parts was studied in detail.

The improvements studied proved to be beneficial in terms of the overall environmental impacts of the crusher: the environmental impacts decreased in all the impact categories studied, even with the shortest life time of the improved wear parts.

With the longest measured life time of improved wear parts, the consumption of non-renewable resources could be decreased by over 50% compared to the traditional product design.