Patent-Based Prospective Life Cycle Inventory of Titanium Powder for Additive Manufacturing

In the recent years, the production of titanium powders has increased considerably due to the increase in uses, especially with additive manufacturing, in various application fields, including aeronautics and biomedical. Consequently, it is necessary to estimate the environmental sustainability of production processes while also considering the rapid technological evolution that characterizes them. This can be done with the prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, which estimates the future environmental impacts of an emerging technology or a new technology still in the R&D phase. This study generates prospective life cycle inventory (LCI) data of titanium powder production for additive manufacturing made with recent developments of Electrode Induction Gas Atomization (EIGA) reactors, which can be used in the prospective LCA. All data for the prospective LCI relating to argon consumption, water consumption, and electrical energy consumption of the EIGA reactor were extracted from the patents using a partly new approach. These data concern the experimental results (expressed through data ranges) obtained from laboratory-scale tests, qualitative and quantitative information to support the scale-up of the experimental data, and information to evaluate the data reliability.