Equinor, a worldwide vitality firm identified for its proactive stance on sustainability, has made a major leap ahead in its environmental technique by 3D printing 4,000 steel elements utilizing recycled supplies supplied by its companion, F3nice. This initiative underscores Equinor’s dedication to minimizing its reliance on virgin supplies and aligns with the corporate’s not too long ago up to date Environmental Coverage and purposeful sustainability necessities.
Since 2020, Equinor has more and more embraced 3D printing expertise as a strategic asset inside its operations. Adopting this expertise has facilitated a shift towards a extra round financial mannequin, enhancing useful resource effectivity and minimizing environmental affect. By using digital inventories along with 3D printing, Equinor reduces the need for stockpiling bodily spare components, which in flip diminishes transport-related emissions and waste era all through its provide chain.
F3nice performs a pivotal function on this transformation by changing steel scraps from Equinor’s operations into high-quality steel powder appropriate for additive manufacturing. The collaborative efforts culminated within the landmark venture accomplished in 2024, the place 4,000 steel components had been manufactured totally from 100% recycled steel powder. This achievement exemplifies the sensible software of round financial system ideas and represents a tangible step in direction of broader company sustainability targets.
Although the affect of 3D printing inside Equinor’s operations is presently modest on a company scale, the corporate acknowledges the huge potential of this expertise. A transparent ambition is to scale its software throughout extra enterprise areas within the coming years, significantly as Equinor strives to satisfy its not too long ago established net-zero goal for renewable actions by 2040.
One of the vital important contributors to emissions in Equinor’s renewable vitality section stems from producing infrastructure utilizing virgin supplies. Addressing this problem requires focused actions to mitigate the availability chain’s environmental affect. A vital speedy technique is to reinforce using recycled supplies, particularly specializing in metal, essentially the most generally used virgin materials in wind farm building.
As Equinor’s renewable vitality operations proceed to develop, the amount of supplies required for these tasks is predicted to signify a considerable share of the corporate’s complete materials influx. Due to this fact, integrating sustainable practices reminiscent of recycled content material and additive manufacturing will probably be important to assembly future environmental and operational targets.
