Irreversibility Approach for Sustainability Analysis of a Netshape Manufacturing System

The approach advocated in this work implements energy/exergy analysis and indirectly an irreversibility evaluation to a continuous manufacturing process involving discrete netshape production of compact heat exchangers through a complex controlled atmosphere brazing (CAB) process. To the best knowledge of the authors, this investigation constitutes the first effort in merging a thorough study of materials processing phenomena and an exergy/irreversibility approach for sustainability analysis in manufacturing. The system under consideration involves fifteen cells of a continuous ramp-up heating, melting, reactive flow, isothermal dwell, and rapid quench solidification processing sequence during a controlled atmosphere brazing of aluminum compact heat exchangers. Detailed mass, energy, and exergy balances were performed. The irreversibility sources were identified and the quality of energy utilization at different processing steps determined.