Dynamic Material Flow Analysis of steel in Europe
Résumé
The study of anthropogenic metal stock and flows highlights the quantity of mate-rials being accumulated through the time and enables to estimate the potential of scrap available for recycling. This paper's focus is on resource utilization. Based on dynamic flow analysis of steel on the territory of the European Union 27 in the period from 1945 to 2014, this communication analyses the steel stock in use, its evolution, distribution through 6 industrial sectors and the potential scrap flow. Fur-ther, it couples the potentially available scrap with statistics on the quantity of scrap being actually consumed, imported and exported. Thus the type of steel being recy-cled is estimated (process scrap and End-of-Life scrap) and the performance effi-ciency of End-of-Life management is also qualified. Results show that the European stock has been constantly increasing through time, reaching 4203 Mt in 2012. Construction and Other transport are contributing the most - 64.7% and 16.6% correspondingly: the Other transport market share in terms of flows is less, but its lifetime is longer, which is the parameter that seems to take precedence. The evolution of stock has not been the same in all European countries. The evolution of stocks in France, Germany, UK and Belgium-Luxembourg has been steady. Southern European countries, like Italy, Greece and Spain had a sharper rise, probably due to construction. East European countries (e.g. Romania, Poland and Hungary) had a decrease in the stock in the 90’s due to the crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Sector contribution to the stock is not the same throughout Europe-an countries either. Another presentation in this conference ought to analyze the same set of data from the standpoint of economic analysis