Emergy accounting on natural graphite and spherical graphite

Currently, resource shortage is a global issue. The low resource prices have resulted in extensive consumption and over-exploitation in order to meet with the demand of economic development. Firstly, this study applied emergy analysis to calculate the emergy values of natural graphite and spherical graphite. The results show that the emergy values were 1.73E+17 for natural graphite in 2015 and 2.18E+17 sej·t^-1for spherical graphite in 2010, respectively. According to the corresponding exchange rates between US dollar and RMB, the Emdollars of the natural graphite in 2015 and spherical graphite in 2010 were around 130000 and 160000 ¥·t^-1, respectively. Meanwhile, their corresponding market prices were only 4500 and 14000 18000 ¥ ·t^-1, respectively. This means that their market prices were far lower than their emergy values. In addition, the emergy values of ecosystem contribution, ecological loss, and damage to human health from spherical graphite production system were also evaluated in this paper. The results show that the emergy value of ecosystem contribution was 1.74E+13 sej·t^-1, while the emergy value of ecosystem service loss was 2.06E+15 sej·t^-1(much larger than the former one), and the largest damage to human health was dust in this system. This study provides valuable suggestions for preparing appropriate prices of graphite products, normalizing graphite trade and ensuring that graphite industry is moving toward sustainable development.