From Integration to Action: Quantifying Circular and Lifecycle Impacts of Recycled Steel in Rail Infrastructure

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-964-3_2How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Steel Recyclability; Railway infrastructure; Steel Scrap; Integrated LCA-CE

Abstract

Railway is the most sustainable mode of transportation in comparison to aviation, waterways, Roadways and is efficiently achieving the energy benchmarks in operations of rolling stocks and railway infrastructure by usage of renewable energy and energy optimization. The push for sustainable transportation is intensifying pressure and increasing the demand of construction of more number of railway track systems and associated infrastructure. This is shifting the focus gradually to the carbon footprint of railway infrastructure production, maintenance and disposal at every lifecycle stage, which is often neglected even though it constitutes huge quantity of Steel which is a high carbon emitter. Steel has highest recyclability potential, hence it should be comprehensively evaluated to maximize the benefits of CE. Integration of LCA and CE can provide holistic solutions to optimally and dynamically use recycle steel in a closed loop in the railway industry by minimizing waste generation. Peer reviewed Electronic database: Science direct database is accessed to extract last 6 years, 2020-2025 research Articles to understand the current state of knowledge, identify current research trends in Circular economy which have recently gained momentum in Railway Infrastructure. Studies before 2019 treated LCA and CE separately but now there is a strong need to analyses and adopt a circular material flow. The central finding and area for improvement is the missing integrated and quantified evaluation of LCA and CE for railway infrastructure. While steel recycling offers significant benefits, the current academic and industry analysis is fragmented and lacks comprehensive metrics. The LCA evaluations of steel majorly account for railway tracks, train cars and tunnel excluding many other components that use steel as a raw material for their production. CE strategies are applied to a theoretical extend to explore the reusability of steel. An integrated and quantified evaluation of LCA and CE is missing. Hence there is a strong need for an integrated quantified analytical LCA and CE framework with combined quantified metric and indicators customized for recycled steel as an inventory for evaluation.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Parvinder Kaur Marwah
AU  - Neeraja Lugani Sethi
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/31
TI  - From Integration to Action: Quantifying Circular and Lifecycle Impacts of Recycled Steel in Rail Infrastructure
BT  - Proceedings of the Conference Series on Sustainable Architecture Circular Economy (SACE 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 4
EP  - 23
SN  - 3005-155X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-964-3_2
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-964-3_2
ID  - Marwah2025
ER  -