An economic and environmental assessment model for microchannel device manufacturing: part 1 – Methodology

Abstract

Available online xxxKeywords: Bottom-up cost modeling Environmental impact assessment Decision making Microchannel process technology Graphical user interface a b s t r a c tTo manage the effects of manufacturing industries on the economy and environment, design tools are needed that will aid engineers to assess manufacturing costs and environmental impacts early in design. The development of cost analyses and environmental assessments can be burdensome, but much of the data used in these analyses can be shared. Little work has been done to integrate environmental assessments with cost analyses for the purposes of evaluating manufacturing plans for both environmental impact and cost. A spreadsheet-based cost and environmental impact assessment model is developed for simultaneously analyzing the effects of manufacturing process plans on both product cost and the environment. A bottom-up process-based cost calculation method is used to estimate microchannel device manufacturing costs over a range of production volumes, while process-based cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment is utilized to evaluate environmental impacts. Both models draw data from a common database for describing the device geometry and the production environment. The method is used to evaluate the manufacturing plan for a microchannel heat exchanger, providing insight into the likely drivers of cost and environmental impact. For this case study, the analysis shows that both cost and environmental impact are dominated by the same process step e diffusion bonding.

Review—Through-Mask Electrochemical Micromachining

“…Likewise, an analysis of potential environmental impacts is due. In line with similar studies, 235,236 these factors need to be considered as a function of the production volume. Thereby, a suitable production volume can be identified and compared with other methods.…”

A cyberlearning platform for enhancing undergraduate engineering education in sustainable product design

“…Prior research has investigated process-based methods decision makers can use to evaluate the cradle-to-gate product life cycle scope from a sustainability perspective (Alsaffar et al, 2016;Eastwood and Haapala, 2015;Gao et al, 2016aGao et al, , 2016b. In addition to these methods, several life cycle assessment (LCA) software tools have been developed to quantify the environmental impacts of the products.…”

Economics of an Additive Manufactured Heat Exchanger for Concentrating Solar Power

“…This approach has been used to co-evaluate cost and supply chains [19], part consolidation [20], and part structure [21]. Cost models for the production of microchannel HX exist [22,23,24], but these models are typically developed post-hoc rather than being integrated into the HX and manufacturing process design process. We integrate our PBCM with the HX performance model and use it as a tool to enable an iterative design process for the HX and AM process.…”