Earth has different cycles that matter to us humans who were the primary consumer of all materials found on it. Those cycles must be studied and analyze to be able to understand how complicated it was to keep producing materials for the past years. One of these cycles is called the material cycle which has a strong three-way interaction among resources, environment, and energy. Others called it a nutrient cycle that describes the flow of matter from the nonliving to the living world and back again, energy costs are incurred at each stage. As we overlook to the materials cycle, the input of energy is required to obtain metals from ores; to make plastics from crude oil; to work and shape metals, ceramics, and plastics; to assemble components and systems; to transport goods at all stages of production and to operate the final product in the hands of the consumer. Then we start to see energy dissipated as metals corrode or rust, as plastics degrade, as the product is discarded and as the trash in the sanitary landfill returns to the low-energy “natural” state. With this phenomenon, matters can be stored and transformed into different molecules, transferred into different molecules, from organism to organism, and restore to its original configuration. The materials cycle is also a third way in which the analogy between biological metabolism and industrial metabolism is useful to focus attention on the "life cycle" of individual "nutrients."
Earth scientists are familiar with the concepts of the hydrological cycle, the carbon cycle, and the nitrogen cycle. The major way in which the industrial metabolic system differs from the natural metabolism of the earth is that the natural cycles (of water, carbon/oxygen, and nitrogen) in other words, the industrial system does not generally recycle it. Rather, the industrial system starts with high-quality mat' (fossil fuels, ores) extracted from the earth, and returns them to nature in a degraded form.
The materials cycle is a global system that includes operations of strong three-way interactions among materials, the environment, and energy supply and demand. The environmental condition depends on how carefully man moves materials through the cycle to a large degree, at each stage of which impacts occur. Materials traversing the cycle may represent an investment of energy in the sense that the energy expended to extract a metal from ore, for example, need not be expanded again if the metals are recycled. Thus a pound of usable iron can be recovered from scrap at about 20 percent of the “energy cost” of extracting a pound of iron from ore. For copper, the figure is about 5 percent, for magnesium about 1.5 percent.
Materials scientists and engineers work most commonly in that part of the materials cycle that extends from raw materials through dismantling and recycling of basic materials. Events in this (or any other) area typically will have repercussions elsewhere in the cycle or system. Research and development, therefore, can open new and sometimes surprising paths around the cycle with concomitant effects on energy and the environment. The development of a magnetically levitated transportation system could increase considerably the demand for the metals that might be used in the necessary superconducting or magnetic alloys. Widespread use of nuclear power could alter sharply the consumption patterns of fossil fuels and the related pressures on transportation systems.
The materials cycle can be perturbed in addition to external factors such as legislation. The Clean Air Act of 1970, for example, created a strong new demand for platinum for use in automotive exhaust-cleanup catalysts. The demand question may be temporary since catalysts have been questioned as to the best long-term solution to the problem, but whatever platinum is required will have to be imported, in large measure, in the face of a serious trade deficit. Environmental legislation also will require extensive recovery of sulfur from fuels and smelter and stack gases; by the end of the century, the tonnage recovered annually could be twice the domestic demand. Such repercussions leave little doubt of the need to approach the materials cycle systematically and with caution.
The materials cycle, in general, can be visualized in terms of a system of compartments containing stocks of one or more nutrients, linked by certain flows. For instance, in the case of the hydrological cycle, the glaciers oceans, the freshwater lakes, and the groundwater are stocks, while rainfall and rivers are flowing. A system is closed if there are no sinks. In this sense, the earth as a whole is essential, closed system, except for the occasional meteorite.
References:
Materials cycle. Definition of materials cycle. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/material-cycle
The Materials Cycle. Materials cycle. Retrieved from
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