Details

Modern manufacturing methods are spectacularly inefficient in their use of energy and materials, according to a detailed MIT analysis of the energy use of 20 major manufacturing processes.

Overall, new manufacturing systems are anywhere from 1,000 to one million times bigger consumers of energy, per pound of output, than more traditional industries. In short, pound for pound, making microchips uses up orders of magnitude more energy than making manhole covers.

At first glance, it may seem strange to make comparisons between such widely disparate processes as metal casting and chip making. But Professor Timothy Gutowski of MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, who led the analysis, explains that such a broad comparison of energy efficiency is an essential first step toward optimizing these newer manufacturing methods as they gear up for ever-larger production.

"The seemingly extravagant use of materials and energy resources by many newer manufacturing processes is alarming and needs to be addressed alongside claims of improved sustainability from products manufactured by these means," Gutowksi and his colleagues say in their conclusion to the study, which was recently published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T).

Gutowksi notes that manufacturers have traditionally been more concerned about factors like price, quality, or cycle time, and not as concerned over how much energy their manufacturing processes use. This latter issue will become more important, however, as the new industries scale up -- especially if energy prices rise again or if a carbon tax is adopted, he says.

Solar panels are a good example. Their production, which uses some of the same manufacturing processes as microchips but on a large scale, is escalating dramatically. The inherent inefficiency of current solar panel manufacturing methods could drastically reduce the technology's lifecycle energy balance -- that is, the ratio of the energy the panel would produce over its useful lifetime to the energy required to manufacture it.

The new study is just "the first step in doing something about it," Gutowski says -- understanding which processes are most inefficient and need further research to develop less energy-intensive alternatives. For example, many of the newer processes involve vapor-phase processing (such as sputtering, in which a material is vaporized in a vacuum chamber so that it deposits a coating on an exposed surface in that chamber), which is usually much less efficient than liquid phase (such as depositing a coating from a liquid solution), but liquid processing alternatives might be developed.

The study covered everything "from soup to nuts" in terms of standard industrial methods, Gutowski says, "from heavy-duty old fashioned industries like a cast-iron foundry, all the way up to semiconductors and nanomaterials." It includes injection molding, sputtering, carbon nanofiber production and dry etching, along with more traditional machining, milling, drilling and melting. There were some boundaries on the processes studied, however: The researchers did not analyze production of pharmaceuticals or petroleum, and they only looked primarily at processes where electricity was the primary energy source.

The figures the team derived are actually conservative, Gutowski says, because they did not include some significant energy costs such as the energy required to make the materials themselves or the energy required to maintain the environment of the plant (such as air conditioning and filtration for clean rooms used in semiconductor processing). "All these things would make [the energy costs] worse," he says.

The bottom line is that "new processes are huge users of materials and energy," he says. Because some of these processes are so new, "they will be optimized and improved over time," he says. But as things stand now, over the last several decades as traditional processes such as machining and casting have increasingly given way to newer ones for the production of semiconductors, MEMS and nano-materials and devices, for a given quantity of output "we have increased our energy and materials consumption by three to six orders of magnitude."

One message from the study is that "claims that these technologies are going to save us in some way need closer scrutiny. There's a significant energy cost involved here," he says. And another is that "each of these processes could be improved," and using the analytical tools developed by the MIT team for this study would be a useful first step in such a detailed analysis.

In addition to Gutowski, the study was done by current and former MIT mechanical engineering students Matthew Branham, Jeffrey Dahmus, Alissa Jones and Alexandre Thiriez, and Dusan Sekulic, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Kentucky. It was funded by the National Science Foundation.

About the Researcher :

Timothy G. Gutowski

Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Education:

PhD, Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institue of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1981.
M.S., Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, University of Illinois, 1968.
B.Sc., Mathematics, University of Wisconsin, 1967.

MIT Service:

1994-PRESENT Director of the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity
1993-PRESENT Professor of Mechanical Engineering
1986-1993 Associate Professor, M.I.T.
1984-1993 Director of the M.I.T.-Industry Composites and Polymer Processing Program.
1981-1986 Assistant Professor, M.I.T.
1977-1981 Research Assistant, M.I.T.
1972-1977 Senior Consultant, Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.
1969-1972 University Instructor, Peace Corps-South America.
1968-1969 Staff Engineer, Wiss, Janney, Elstner and Associates.

Consulting & Patents

Foster Miller Assoc. 7/81 --
James Russell Eng. Works, Inc, 5/84 - 6/84
E.I. DuPont DeNemours & Co., 12/84- 9/92
RTE Aerovox, 1/86 - 1/88
American Composites Tech, 2/88 - 9/92
Ibis Associates, 6/88 --
General Electric, 7/89 --
Alcoa, 11/89 12/89
Martin Marietta, 11/91 --
Elsevier, 1990 --
GLCC, 1998 - 1998
NSF Panel, 1999 - 2001

Patents

• Gutowski, T.G., Dillon, G., Li, H. and Chey, S., "Controllable Reinforced Diaphragm Forming",U.S. Patent No. 5,578,158, Nov. 26, 1996.
• Gutowski, T.G., Dillon, G., Li, H. and Chey, S., "Inflated Tool Diaphragm Forming", MIT Case No. 6664, November 1994.
• Gutowski, T.G., Dillon, G., Li, H., and Chey, S., "Method and System for Forming a Composite Product From A Thermoformable Material", U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 08/203/797, MIT Case # 4669, March 1994.
• Koschnitzke, K., Gutowski, T.G., and Youcef-Toumi, K., "An Electric Harmonica", M.I.T. Case N. 6319, May 1993.
• Berg, T. and Gutowski, T.G., "Helical Tooling for Consolidation of Thermoplastic Composite Tubes", U.S. Patent No. 5,208,051, May 4, 1993.
• Gutowski, T.G., Sentovich, M.F., and Okine, R. "Method of Producing a Composite Article", U.S. Patent No. 5, 066, 442, Nov. 19, 1991.
• Gutowski, T. G. and Suh, N. P., "Low Energy Polymer-Solvent Separations," U.S. Patent No. 4,444,922, April 12, 1984.

Principal Publications (last ten years)

1. S.M. Haffner and T.G. Gutowski, "Manufacturing Time Estimation Laws for Composite Materials", 2000 NSF Proceedings, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
2. S.M. Haffner and T.G. Gutowski, "Automated Cost Estimation for Advanced Composites", 1999 NSF , Long Beach, CA.
3. S.M. Haffner and T.G. Gutowski, "Automated Cost Estimation for Advanced Composite Materials", NSF Conference, 1998.
4. T. G. Gutowski and H. Li, "Kinenatics in the Diaphragm Forming of Advanced Composites" Proceedings of the 1998 NSF Design and Manufacturing Grantees Conference, pp 465-466 Jan 5-8, 1998 Monterrey, Mexico
5. T. G. Gutowski, "Pultrusion Workbook" for GLCC/LeMay Center for Composite Technology, May 1998.
6. H. Li, T. Gutowski, and S-B, Shim, " A Forming Model for Prepreg Material", Proceedings of the American Society of Composites, Oct 6-8, 1997 Detroit, MI.
7. Zhong Cai and Timothy Gutowski, "Consolidation Techniques and Cure Control", chapter for Handbook for Composites, edited by Stan Peters, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1997.
8. H. Li, and T, Gutowski, "The Forming of Thermoset Composites", chapter for Composite Sheet Forming, Composite Materials Series, Vol. II, edited by Debes Bhattacharyya of University of Auckland, New Zeland, Elsevier Science, 1997.
9. Gutowski, T.G., (ed.) Advanced Composites Manufacturing, John Wiley, 1997.
10. T. G. Gutowski and H. Li, "Innovative Forming Processes for Advanced Composites", Proceedings of the 1997 NSF Design and Manufacturing Grantees Conference, pp 281-282 Jan 7-10, 1997 Seattle, WA.
11. T.G. Gutowski and L. Ilcewicz, "Advanced Composite Design for Low Cost" 1996 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition Symposium on Design and Manufacturing of Composites, November 17-22, 1996, Atlanta, Georgia.
12. T.G. Gutowski, "Design Scaling Laws for Advanced Composite Fabrication Cost" The Third International Symposium, Textile Composites in Building Construction, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. Nov. 7-9, 1996.
13. L.B. Ilcewicz, T.G. Gutowski et al., "Cost Optimization Software for Transport Aircraft Design Evaluation (COSTADE) - Design Cost Methods" NASA Contractor Report 4737, 1996.

Scientific & Professional Societies:

American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Society of Plastics Engineers
Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
Society of Rheology
Polymer Processing Society
American Society for Composites

Honors & Awards 

1999-2000 Panel Chairman, NSF panel on Environmentally Benign Manufacturing
1995-present North American Editor, Composites, Part A.
1995-present Associate Editor, Journal of Manufacturing Systems
1991-1995 Editor for North America, Composites Manufacturing
1989-present MIT Leaders for Manufacturing Professorship
1989-1995 Editorial Advisory Board, SAMPE Journal
1988-present Editorial Advisory Board, J of Thermoplastic Composite Materials
1987-present Editorial Board, Encyclopedia of Composites
1985-1992 Alcoa Professorship, MIT
1989-1991 Editorial Advisory Board, Composites Manufacturing

Department & Institute Committees

1993 - 1998 Academic Committee, Department of Mechanical Engineering
1993-present Engineering Council, School of Engineering, M.I.T.
1999-2001 Search Committee, Faculty Candidates
1999-2001 Department Head Search for Mecahncial Engineering (Chairman)

Professional Service:

1999-2001 Chairman, NSF Panel on Environmental Benign Manufacturing
1998-present Co-Leader for Factory Operations, Lean Aircraft Initiative

Contact information of  Timothy G. Gutowski:

Room 35-234
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge MA 02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2034  
Email: gutowski@mit.edu

Web: http://web.mit.edu/ebm