Assesment of the Environmental Impact in the Design of Production Machines in Terms of Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Selected

The presented doctoral thesis is focused on environmental impact assessment of basic engineering materials used in a production machine construction. Ecological profile of the machine itself develops already in the phase of its design. It is not only about the choice of future machine parameters and materials that it is built from, but also about technologies used for its manufacture and operation conditions of the finished machine (consumption of energy and service fluids). The thesis occupies in detail with environmental impact analysis of the production machine design from the viewpoint of material production that mentioned machine consists of. The output from the performed analysis is methodology for evaluating of machine design from the viewpoint of greenhouse gas emissions. Created methodology enables evaluating of machine ecological profile and its possible adjustments even during pre-production stage. In the first part of the thesis the analysis of current legislation in the field of fighting against climate changes, reducing of products energy consumption and increasing of production machines energy efficiency is presented. Also in this part of the thesis description of methods that were used to achieve thesis goals is stated. Furthermore analysis of production machine as a system of structural components that fulfil the certain functions and description of used basic engineering materials are presented. The second part of the thesis is devoted to environmental impact analysis of the production machine design process. There the design process and environmental impact of machine design are described. This is followed by description of production machine life cycle and detailed analysis of undesirable substances emissions emitted during pre-production phases of machine life cycle (i.e. during the raw materials extraction and materials production). From this analysis the particular constituents’ pre-production phases which are sources of undesirable substances emissions (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions) were derived. The thesis also includes analysis of these constituents’ life cycles and description of electric power generation as a basic constituent of any phase of product life cycle. In this part of the thesis calculations of particular fuel type’s amounts that is required to produce 1 MWh of electric power and carbon dioxide amount produced during electric power generation are presented. The third part of the thesis contains created models of manufacturing processes of basic engineering materials and calculations of related emissions of selected greenhouse gases. The practical output from this part of the thesis is methodology that enables environmental impact assessment of machine design from the viewpoint of engineering materials used in its construction