Process chain analysis of lightweight metal components - a case study

This document builds on an environmental relevance study of metal processing for the Eco-Design of lightweight components in the aviation industry and highlights the relevance of metal processing for the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based Eco-Design of lightweight applications. The environmental relevance of metal processing is often low when compared to the environmental impacts of the preceding mining and refining of ores as well as their processing into metal ingots, so that the negligibility of metal processing has become a commonly used axiom of many LCA studies. Even for the production of lightweight components in the aviation industry, this credo is commonly recited while referring to the good recyclability of metal. This paper analyses whether this credo of the negligibility of metal processing in LCA can really hold true for the production of lightweight components and crystallizes its major environmental hotspots.