Sand casting has different types such as wet sand casting process and non clay sand casting process. The static pressure casting process of wet sand casting and V method casting process of non clay sand casting are selected for case calculation, and the calculation method is life cycle assessment method. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a systematic environmental management tool to evaluate the potential environmental impact of the whole life cycle of products, processes or activities, including raw material acquisition, product production, transportation, sales, use, maintenance and final disposal.

In order to facilitate the comparison and analysis of the evaluation results of the two casting processes, the unit mass casting (ton of product) is selected as the functional unit to calculate the resource consumption, energy consumption and environmental load in the process of producing one ton of sand casting by a sand casting process. The evaluation system boundary shall include all links in the sand casting production process.

According to the research, the two typical sand casting processes are summarized as four processes: melting, molding, pouring and cleaning, including all the production processes of casting from raw materials to qualified finished products after manufacturing and processing. The raw materials and auxiliary materials include their mining process. The mining process data uses the China Life Cycle Core Database (CLCD), and the production process data is collected and investigated on the spot according to the actual production process of the enterprise.