InImpact: The Journal of Innovation Impact

Publisher Future Technology Press
Vol. 7 No. 2 KES Transactions on SDM I - Sustainable Design and Manufacturing 2014
Volume Editors KES International
Journal ISSN 2051-6002
 
Article TitleA carbon efficiency method to evaluate the environmental burden of a workshop based on energy footprint and carbon footprint
Primary AuthorChaoyang Zhang, Xi?an Jiaotong University
Other Author(s) Pingyu Jiang; Lei Zhang; Weidong Li; Peihua Gu
Pages 911 - 923
Article ID sdm14-011
Publication Date 01-May-16
AbstractDue to the huge consumption of materials and energy during machining processes, reduction of carbon emissions of workshops is an essential key to decrease the environmental burden of various manufacturing systems. To achieve this, the first step is to devise methods to calculate and evaluate the carbon emissions of workshops. In this paper, a workshop is decomposed into three levels from bottom to top, i.e. the facility level, the workpiece level and the workshop level, and the energy footprint and carbon footprint of each level are quantified based on the life cycle assessment method (LCA). Then three carbon efficiency indicators which consider production quantity and economic return are proposed. At last, the carbon efficiency method is applied in a workshop of gear machining to verify its feasibility and applicability. The results show that the carbon efficiency of a workshop fluctuates slightly in time and it is mainly related to the key workpiece which has high carbon efficiency, so it is more effective to reduce the carbon emission to adjust the machining parameters of key processes or cut down the production quantity of products with high carbon emission.
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