Life Cycle Assessment of ECO-Magnesium® Alloy Produced by Green Metallurgy EU Project Process Route

Abstract

Employing AZ31B Eco-Magnesium® (Eco-Mg) alloy in the European project Green Metallurgy (Green Metallurgy Project) process route provides the lowest carbon footprint since precursor materials. Chips produced from the machining phase can be used directly in the cold compaction step, and followed by direct extrusion to produce fully densified semifinished bars. These materials are of great interest in certain manufacturing sectors as they can impact future market scenarios based on the high rate of recycled material. Specifically, there are two key-points which can be considered sources of improvement: a) Eco-Mg alloys contribute to drastically reduce of the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of the entire process route as recycled chips have been used as feedstock material; b) Eco-Mg are less expensive materials, and therefore of interest to the automobile sectors for cost-driven lightweight components. Using 30% in-situ recycled chips material allows manufacturers to keep the total GWP of semifinished bar produced by the tested process route to about 76.2 kgC02eq per kg of bar.