Environmental Sustainability of Additive Manufacturing: A Case Study of Indian Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

Manufacturing industries across the globe are now adopting additive manufacturing (AM) practices over the traditional manufacturing process due to less waste generation and other economic and emissions benefits. Additive manufacturing can also be considered a key enabling technology for the high technology plan. However, the practices related to additive manufacturing in developing and developed economies are limited due to knowledge and technological advancements. Environmental impact assessment is an emerging research area highlighted in the last few years. At this point, research and industry attention is focused on determining where AM can replace or create new manufacturing systems. This study compares the environmental impact assessment of traditional and additive manufacturing processes by considering a case of pattern making. This paper also investigates how additive manufacturing technologies contribute to creating a sustainable environment in the manufacturing industry. A real-time case study is performed in SMEs of India, showing that additive manufacturing processes help lower the environmental impacts. The present study also highlighted the opportunities for additive manufacturing in sustainability. The gate-to-gate analysis is performed, and impact assessment is done by GABI software version 9 on Windows 10 operating system. In this report, a case study has been done to compare the traditional IC and AM processes using Aluminum alloy (Al-Si-Cu) in terms of environmental Sustainability. Results show that 28.77% reduction in GWP, 74.04% reduction in emission to Air, 36.30% reduction in AP and 45.62% reduction in HTP by using AM process. Overall, AM process is an environmentally sustainable process. This study would help researchers and the manufacturing industry determine the emissions associated with pattern making using the conventional IC process under Indian climatic conditions. It assists manufacturing industries in choosing the best available IC alternative regarding reduced environmental emissions.