Hi There
Can anyone offer some advice for an appropriate ecoinvent datapoint to represent the activity of electric resistance welding (ERW). Within ecoinvent there is electric arc welding, but my understanding is this is a different process requiring some shielding gasses. Any advice on modelling this process would be great. It is an upstream activity so we don’t have access to detailed primary data here.
Thanks
Sam
Hi Sam,
Thanks for posting!
You’re absolutely right that ERW doesn’t use shielding gasses, so electric arc welding isn’t a direct match. However, both processes are electricity-based so it may be a reasonable proxy since the electricity is likely the most significant source of environmental impact.
As an alternative, you could research literature to find average energy consumption for ERW and model this with a local/regional electricity dataset.
Depending on how considerable the welding is in the overall manufacturing process, the more accurate data you want. If it’s required for a minor component, proxy data would be sufficient and electric arc welding is probably a conservative choice.
As always, transparency is key so however you decide to model it, remember to document your assumptions with justification.
Graham