A Carbon Footprint Comparison Through LCA of Forging vs. Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) Processes for the Internal Casing of a Gas Turbine

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The European Commission is increasingly investing efforts on regulating and standardizing Environmental Footprint (EF) assessment for both Products and Organizations. In the framework of UN Agenda 2030, proactivity in performing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on products is becoming of vital importance for companies, as well as having internal initiatives for carbon reduction and implementation of eco-design practices. Energy and turbomachinery industries are focal points in this context, and these industries should pioneer such initiatives. For such consolidated industries, it is important to assess the environmental impact of their more traditional processes and products, such as gas turbines (GT), in comparison to innovative ones. As a case study, this paper showcases a Life Cycle Assessment evaluation of two different manufacturing processes, taking internal case of gas turbines as an example. These items are commonly manufactured by forging process. The aim of this paper is to compare the carbon footprint of producing these components through forging or Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) process. The applied methodology is Life Cycle Assessment as per ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006, using EF 1.03 as calculation method. Modelling was performed on SimaPro software and for background data Ecoinvent (vv. 3.5) was employed. In addition, uncertainty of the results of both the technologies have been assessed using the pedigree matrix.