Equinor, a worldwide vitality firm recognized 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 accomplice, F3nice. This initiative underscores Equinor’s dedication to minimizing its reliance on virgin supplies and aligns with the corporate’s just lately up to date Environmental Coverage and purposeful sustainability necessities.
Since 2020, Equinor has more and more embraced 3D printing know-how as a strategic asset inside its operations. Adopting this know-how has facilitated a shift towards a extra round financial mannequin, enhancing useful resource effectivity and minimizing environmental impression. By using digital inventories along with 3D printing, Equinor reduces the need for stockpiling bodily spare elements, which in flip diminishes transport-related emissions and waste technology 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 elements have been manufactured totally from 100% recycled steel powder. This achievement exemplifies the sensible utility of round economic system rules and represents a tangible step in direction of broader company sustainability objectives.
Although the impression of 3D printing inside Equinor’s operations is presently modest on a company scale, the corporate acknowledges the huge potential of this know-how. A transparent ambition is to scale its utility throughout extra enterprise areas within the coming years, significantly as Equinor strives to satisfy its just lately established net-zero goal for renewable actions by 2040.
One of the 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 impression. A vital speedy technique is to reinforce the usage of recycled supplies, particularly specializing in metal, essentially the most generally used virgin materials in wind farm development.
As Equinor’s renewable vitality operations proceed to develop, the quantity of supplies required for these initiatives is predicted to signify a considerable share of the corporate’s complete materials influx. Subsequently, integrating sustainable practices similar to recycled content material and additive manufacturing might be important to assembly future environmental and operational targets.
