Manufacturing processes as material and energy efficiency strategies enablers: The case of Single Point Incremental Forming to reshape end-of-life metal components

Abstract

Making materials consumes about 21% of the global energy demand; concerning metals production, it accounts for about 8% of total global energy consumption. Circular economy strategies such as longer life, more intense use, repair, product upgrades, modularity, remanufacturing, component reuse, and open/closed-loop recycling are strategies to put in place urgently to reduce the environmental impact of raw material production. Although recycling of metals is the most used strategy and is being improved in terms of efficiency, it is mandatory moving towards more virtuous circular economy strategies, such as product/component reuse. In this paper a novel reuse strategy for sheet metal based End-of-life components is proposed; to be more specific the suitability of Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF) to reshape End-of-life aluminum components is presented. An experimental approach is used to change the shape of a square box, previously obtained by deep-drawing processes, by means of single point incremental forming processes. The paper aims at outlining the environmental impact of the proposed reshaping approach presenting a Cumulative Energy Demand and CO2-eq. emissions comparative analysis. Three different routes are analyzed and compared to one another: SPIF based reshaping, conventional recycling and Solid State Recycling (SSR) routes. The SPIF based approach proved to be the most environmentally friendly strategy, the energy and emissions saving are ascribable to the fewer process steps and the less material involved with respect to the analyzed recycling strategies.