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Article: MIT: 'Alarming' use of energy in modern manufacturing methods.
- Article from:
- Nanotechnology Business Journal
- Article date:
- April 27, 2009
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--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 ...