Life cycle assessment of additive manufacturing process: A systematic literature

Alam, Sairul and Putri, Riri Ramadhani (2025) Life cycle assessment of additive manufacturing process: A systematic literature. World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 26 (2). pp. 4387-4402. ISSN 2581-9615

Additive Manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing is a breakthrough in the industrial world, providing freedom to create designs that have never existed before and achieve high material efficiency. Nevertheless, it turns out that additive manufacturing still faces significant challenges, particularly in terms of energy consumption and emissions during production. This study conducted a systematic literature review to assess the environmental impact of AM technology using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. This study analyzes 80 articles from the Scopus database using VOSviewer software to identify research trends over the past ten years, knowledge gaps, and the challenges faced in implementing sustainable AM. The study results indicate that although the AM method has proven more efficient in material utilization than conventional methods, environmental challenges such as material waste and greenhouse gas emissions produced require further investigation. This study emphasizes the importance of ISO 14044:2006 standards in LCA to evaluate environmental impacts more comprehensively and to support more sustainable decision-making in implementing this technology. This study provides important insights for future studies to focus on reducing the negative environmental effects of the AM process to enhance sustainability in manufacturing processes.