Session: 03-06 Design for sustainability

Paper Number: 127558

127558 - Design for Sustainability of Gas Turbines: Accuracy on Carbon Footprint at Different Design Steps 

In the scenario of Global Worming fight and due to increasing focus on environmental impact of products, industries are committed to reduce their GHGs emissions. For doing that, sustainable product design is a way for producing less impactful products. Since the design of the product will affect most of its performance, environmental performance must be considered as well. Industries are so far experiencing an increasing attention in eco-design, which can be considered as a system of practices for designing a more performing product from environmental impacts point of view.

In the design process, which foresees three different phases (conceptual, preliminary, detailed), uncertainties related to unknown features and information can affect the environmental impact estimation and a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) could provide unreliable results. This work aims to analyze this issue by a case study in the field of turbomachinery sector: the NPD (New Product Development) of a gas turbine is used as the opportunity to quantify the accuracy of an LCA performed in the early design stage, through the three steps, varying the available information about the product under development.

The use case is a set of forged wheels of an aeroderivative gas turbine, which allows to analyze several scenarios of uncertainty: material, production process, production Country. The focus is on Carbon Footprint assessment.

Presenting Author: Rachele Orlandi Baker Hughes

Presenting Author Biography: Rachele Orlandi is Design Engineer for Engine Systems Design for Turbine and Axial Expanders at Baker Hughes since 2021. In this role, her main focus is on Design to Cost and Sustainability: main responsibilities are to lead cost reduction projects, to formulate design to cost and design to sustainability contents, to perform Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis on components and production technologies. A paper by Rachele on Design to Cost & Sustainability was presented at ASME TurboExpo2022.
Since 2022, Rachele is also doing a PhD at University of Perugia, "Energy and Sustainable Development", about sustainability themes, focusing on design to sustainability and carbon reduction and Life Cycle Costing (LCC), which scope is to implement sustainability since the early design stages also considering costs.
She had her Bachelor Degree in Mechanical Engineering at University of Rome "La Sapienza", and her Master Degree in Energy Engineering at University of Florence with a master thesis on steel sector decarbonization "Energy and Sustainability assessment of an integrated steel making and slow pyrolisys process".
Rachele loves travelling and discover foreign cultures, landscapes and food.

Authors:

Mosè Al Freijat Baker Hughes
Rachele Orlandi Baker Hughes
Martina Pucciarelli Baker Hughes
Giacomo Ragni Baker Hughes
Angela Serra Baker Hughes
Francesco Fantozzi Università degli studi di Perugia