A comparison of cold spray, atmospheric plasma spray and high velocity oxy fuel processes for WC-Co coatings deposition through LCA and LCCA

In this study, an environmental and economic assessment of WC-Co coatings deposited by Cold Gas Spray (CGS), Atmospheric Plasma Spray (APS) and High Velocity Oxy Fuel (HVOF) spray technologies is carried out. Using SimaPro LCA software, several environmental impact categories are analyzed to compare their environmental performance. The economic analysis includes capital and operating expenditures. The results have highlighted that all three processes exhibit low environmental impact in terms of CO2 emissions but the performance of the CGS process is heavily influenced by the low deformability of WC-Co, while the APS process is affected by high electricity consumption. In terms of economic analysis, the HVOF process exhibits the best performance, while the CGS process requires most time to deposit the coating, and consequently, it is the process where the workforce component is most significant. These results depend on the fact that CGS might not be the most suitable deposition technique for fabricating WC-Co coatings.