A methodology for the environmental comparison of metal shaping technologies: an in-depth analysis on recycling related issues

The reduction of CO2 emissions is an urgent objective to pursue. Thescientific and the industrial world have gathered such challenge,starting to find out energy- and resource-efficient manufacturingstrategies. From the literature review, in the domain of environmentalimpact analysis of manufacturing processes, two relevant knowledgegaps can be spotted: (1) the metal forming processes (and, inparticular, the bulk forming processes) are still not well documented,and (2) there is a lack of systematic and comparative studies onenergy and material flows enabling the identification ofenvironmentally-friendly manufacturing design strategies. Thisresearch offers a contribution to a better understanding of theenvironmental impact of forming and machining processes. Theperformance of the two processes is evaluated and compared with thevarying of the material usage related factors. The impacts on the finalresults of the aluminum recycling strategy as well as of the appliedmethod to account for benefits of recycling are analyzed. Therefore,the paper represents an effort aimed at tuning and improving amethodology able to thoroughly analyze the environmental impact of agiven process, and to better compare different manufacturingstrategies from the environmental point of view.