Circularity: Understanding the Environmental Tradeoffs of Additive Manufacturing with Waste Plastics

This paper examines the emissions tradeoffs of additive manufacturing (i.e., 3D printing) using plastic waste in fused granular fabrication (FGF) versus traditional fused filament fabrication (FFF) and injection molding (IM). A ‘cradle-to-gate’ life cycle assessment (LCA) was utilized to compare the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Recycling (Basel) 2024-10, Vol.9 (5), p.72
Main Authors: Bilal, Eesha, Glazer, Yael R., Sassaman, Doug M., Seepersad, Carolyn C., Webber, Michael E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
3D printing
Additive manufacturing
Air quality management
Carbon dioxide
circular economy
Costs
cradle-to-gate emissions
distributed recycling
Emission analysis
Emissions
Emissions control
Energy consumption
Environmental aspects
Environmental impact
Fabrication
Fused deposition modeling
fused granular fabrication
Injection molding
Landfills
Life cycle analysis
Life cycle assessment
Literature reviews
Manufacturing
Plastic debris
Plastic scrap
Polyethylene terephthalate
Polymers
Printers
Production methods
Raw materials
Recycling
sustainable additive manufacturing
Three dimensional printing
Tradeoffs
Waste disposal sites
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Summary:This paper examines the emissions tradeoffs of additive manufacturing (i.e., 3D printing) using plastic waste in fused granular fabrication (FGF) versus traditional fused filament fabrication (FFF) and injection molding (IM). A ‘cradle-to-gate’ life cycle assessment (LCA) was utilized to compare these methods, built in OpenLCA v1.11.0 with the Ecoinvent v3.9.1 database. Different scenarios were used to evaluate the impacts of varying transportation and material inputs, highlighting critical emission contributors in manufacturing plastic goods. FGF with waste plastic can significantly reduce climate impact by 82.1% relative to FFF and 70.6% relative to IM for a specified unit product. Even with varied transportation and materials, FGF is a lower CO2-equivalent emitting method. Utilizing FGF with waste plastic as a manufacturing method could reduce emissions and divert plastic from landfills and the environment, thereby contributing to a circular plastic economy.
ISSN:2313-4321
2313-4321
DOI:10.3390/recycling9050072