Comparison of Primary Energy Consumption Between Additive Manufacturing Processes and CNC Machining Applied to Components in the Oil and Gas Sector

Abstract

This work elucidates the environmental impact on the production of components in the oil and gas sector by analyzing two different production routes. To this end, a life cycle assessment of the CNC machining process and additive manufacturing (AM) was carried out using Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) technology. Life cycle inventories were prepared for both processes, using the Open LCA software and information from the Ecoinvent database to develop the life cycle, with Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) being considered as the impact method. From the analysis, it was found that the machining process presented an energy demand of 7177 MJ. In contrast, the MJF presented 3214 MJ, less than half of the primary energy required to produce one unit of the studied component, thus indicating that manufacturing by MJF presents greater environmental sustainability than the Oil and Gasconventional machining process.