Abstract
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a well-defined methodology employed to evaluate environmental impacts along the life cycle of products and services. Even if the methodology is standardized, its applicability relies on the availability of representative inventory data. Utilization of LCA in the turbomachinery sector is recent, therefore the lack of representative processes of this sector in commercial databases. Commercial databases provide generic processes, not always representative of the turbomachinery industry processes, which may increase the uncertainty of the LCA results and provide low accuracy. An example is the forging process, which is employed to manufacture most turbomachinery components, due to high material properties requirements. The forging process strictly depends on geometry, material, and size of component to be produced. Ideally, for each forged item, primary data would be collected to create and inventory and an LCA model. The data collection but would require a huge effort in terms of time by the forging industry and the LCA practitioner. Up to now, the lack of primary data on the specific processes has been overcome by leveraging on company validated information. This article presents an approach to overcome the lack of primary data to be used to model the forging process of semi-finished components considering all the processes required for its production. A simplified model has been developed, based on validated databases and Baker Hughes’supply chain real data. This model allows a quick and more accurate estimation of the environmental impact in terms of Carbon Footprint (CF) of forging process with a lower uncertainty compared to commercial database.
