ECOS:Environmental Relevance of Metal Processing for the Eco-Design of Lightweight Components
This document,named as Environmental Relevance of Metal Processing for the Eco-Design of Lightweight Components,builds on a process chain analysis of lightweight metal components in the aviation industry and highlights the relevance of metal processing for the Life Cycle Assessment(LCA)based Eco-Design of lightweight applications.The environmental relevance of metal processing is often low when compared to the environmental impacts of the preceding mining and refining of ores as well as their processing into metal ingots,so that the negligibility of metal processing has become a commonly used axiom of many LCA studies.Even for the production of lightweight components in the aviation industry – where often more than 10 kg of material have to be processed to create 1 kg of finished component – this credo is commonly recited while referring to the good recyclability of metal.This paper analyses whether this credo of the negligibility of metal processing in LCA can really hold true for the production of lightweight components and crystallizes its major environmental hotspots.Building on the results of the environmental impact analysis of metal processing for standard applications the process chains for lightweight metal component production in the aviation industry are examined for potential environmental differences.The major differences identified are integrated into the impact assessment and quantified for environmental hotspot crystallization.The results of this analysis show that metal removal can tremendously increase the environmental impacts of lightweight component production.The major environmental impact triggering parameters are identified as the quantity and quality of the produced and recycled scrap.Depending on these major parameters the environmental impacts of lightweight component production can be found up to more than ten times higher than when neglecting metal processing.Correctly reflecting the quantity and quality metal flows within the processing of metal into lightweight components is essential for LCA based Eco-Design of lightweight components so that the development of respective LCA models commends itself.
Metal Processing Lightweight Component Production Environmental Analysis Life Cycle Assessment Eco-Design
D.Wehner R.Ilg
Department Life Cycle Engineering(University of Stuttgart),Stuttgart,Germany
国际会议
桂林
英文
1-10
2013-07-16（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）