Environmental impacts-based milling process planning using a life cycle assessment tool

Due the need for development of tools that can be used to evaluate the influence of milling process operating conditions on environmental impacts, this paper investigates the use of a commercial life cycle assessment (LCA) tool at this process level, enabling the identification of the most problematic inputs, or “hotspots”, and the comparison of different operational strategies (two different sizes of machine, two different materials tool and two different speeds) in terms of their environmental impacts. Despite the proven potential to be used for evaluation of the resources consumed by, and environmental impacts of, an industrial milling process, a weak point was also identified, which is the high standard deviation of the data, reduced by integrating actual energy consumption with the LCA software inventory data. An impact spider chart and an average impact indicator were also created, making the comparison easier.