Green Manufacturing – Analysis and Prediction of Emissions in an Industrial Hot Forming Process Chain

This project investigates the CO₂ emissions from the stage of material acquisition up to the final component. The first project stage focusses on the process chain in hot plate forging of gear racks. After identifying the impact of each sub-process step on the total CO₂ emissions, the project investigates measures for the reduction of CO₂ emissions. After the material acquisition, most CO₂ emissions arise from heating operations. Therefore, a process-dependent concept, like a counter-current heat exchanger, is analyzed to recover process heat. This heat exchanger transfers the heat of the formed components to the cold workpieces (see Figure b). Moreover, a developed analytical approach enables the prediction of the product-specific CO₂ emissions already at the product design stage. Further investigations focus on scrap reduction, which is responsible for the largest proportion of total CO₂ emissions (see Figure a).