Energy consumption model of plasma spraying based on unit process life cycle inventory

Plasma spraying is an energy intensive manufacturing process to provide function coatings. As such, energy consumption analysis always is promising for the development of green plasma spraying. In this study, a systematic energy consumption model of plasma spraying was presented considering various working states and processing parameters with unit process life cycle inventory method. Verification showed that energy consumption could be accurately calculated with this model within 5% errors. In light of this model, an L9 Taguchi test was carried out to investigate the relationship between energy consumption and coating quality (i.e., coating thickness, hardness, and porosity) with different processing factors (i.e., power, powder feeding rate, spraying jet velocity, and scanning step). It was indicated that power was the most influential factors for the energy consumption and the following factors were scanning step and spraying jet velocity. Besides, Energy analysis showed that the coating thickness and hardness are closely related to the unit energy consumption with a linear and quadratic function respectively. This work provides a basic guidance for quantifying energy consumption and could be extended for the sustainable development of plasma spraying.