New Manufacturing Processes Require Too Much Energy and Materials
When a new and revolutionary technology appears, everybody is concerned about its cycle time, and of course, pricing. However, so far nobody was interested in how much energy new manufacturing processes use, and if we believe a MIT analysis then we will notice that cutting-edge techniques require too much energy and materials.
According to the study led by MIT researchers, modern manufacturing techniques are one thousand to one millions times bigger “consumers of energy per pound of output” than conventional industries. Timothy Gutowski, Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, says that we use a whole lot more energy to make microchips than to make a manhole housing. Although these are very different domains of activity, Professor Gutowski says that somebody has to ring the alarm bell in order to optimize modern manufacturing methods in terms of energy and materials use.
“The seemingly extravagant use of materials and energy resources by many newer manufacturing processes is alarming and needs to be addressed alongside claims of improved sustainability from products manufactured by these means,” said Gutowski in the study published in the ES&T (Environmental Science and Technology) journal.
MIT researchers are hoping that the energy use will become a priority for manufacturers which are more concerned about profit, but this will probably change when energy prices will rise and when a carbon tax will be adopted. Gutowski used solar panels as an example because the manufacturing process is similar with the manufacturing process of microchips but on a larger scale. State-of-the-art solar panels manufacturing techniques require very much energy and it’s a very inefficient process. According to the study, in their lifecycle solar panels do not generate as much power as the energy consumed during their manufacturing process.
“Our study represents just the first step in doing something about it,” said Gutowski. ” We covered everything from soup to nuts, from heavy-duty old fashioned industries like a cast-iron foundry, all the way up to semiconductors and nanomaterials.”
I have to say that I have a doubt about the above words as the researchers did not consider pharmaceuticals and petroleum. The excuse of Professor Gutowski was that they only analyzed manufacturing processes that use electricity as the main energy source, however, it was a wrong thing to claim that you “covered everything from soup to nuts” and MIT’s study might lose some of its credibility.
Gutowski also added that their study doesn’t include “some significant energy costs” like the energy used to manufacture materials themselves as “all these things would make the energy costs worse.”
“New processes are huge users of materials and energy, but because some are so new, they will be optimized and improved over time,” concluded Gutowski. “[The study] claims that these technologies are going to save us in some way need closer scrutiny. There’s a significant energy cost involved here.”
