Prospective LCA of Patented Selective Laser Melting and Direct Energy Deposition Technologies Working with Steel and Titanium Powder

Prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) could be more suitable than traditional LCA for assessing the environmental impacts of Selective Laser Melt-ing (SLM) and Direct Energy Deposition (DED) technologies given that they are subject to rapid evolution. The main difficulty in doing this lies in collecting signif-icant data to build the foreground inventory of these technologies. To address this limitation, this study evaluates the environmental impacts of future advancements in SLM and DED technologies, working with steel and titanium powder, through a prospective LCA approach, leveraging patent data. The considered functional unit is the production of a bike frame. As result, the environmental impact of future DED was found to be lower than that of future SLM. Future SLM and DED technologies are more eco-friendly compared to their current counterparts, with impacts derived from reference studies. Titanium is found more environmentally friendly than steel in both the future technologies. Manufacturing the bike frame using DED with titanium is more environmentally friendly. Finally, the scenario analysis shows that the impacts of both technologies diminish considering future scenarios for modelling the background inventory.