Incorporating Life-Cycle Assessment Issues for Green Energy Manufacturing Education

This paper describes the incorporation of life cycle assessment practices for teaching students from a variety of engineering disciplines in design and manufacturing. Green energy manufacturing is an emerging field and also provides a sustainable development model for modern manufacturing industries. Sustainable green manufacturing encompasses the design of manufacturing processes to prioritize energy conservation, pollution prevention or reduction, and increased health and safety of communities, employees, and consumers. In this age of global warming and diminishing fossil fuel stores, society is becoming increasingly aware that seemingly small decisions can have surprisingly far-reaching implications on the environment and future generations. Accordingly, today’s engineers must approach design problems with a holistic, broad view of the impacts, environmental and otherwise, of their solutions. The notion of life cycle provides a structured, comprehensive approach for assessing the impact of an engineering solution, whether it takes the form of a product, a service, or a process. An engineering solution’s life cycle includes all of the inter-related stages of its existence, from design to manufacturing and, ultimately, disposal. Life cycle is commonly used to assess environmental impact in each of these stages. However, this full “cradle-to-grave” view of an engineering solution’s life span facilitates comprehensive evaluation along other equally important dimensions, such as cost, resource requirements, manufacturability, serviceability and even social impact. Academic disciplines such as industrial ecology and life cycle assessment, which are part this incorporation, are essential in helping engineers understand the importance of using scientific assessment to evaluate systematic sustainability impacts. The overall goal of this work is to share more details of this process and broaden the thinking of sustainability for engineering education.