Environmental impact evaluation for the full life cycle of products using Pb-free solders

The electronics industry is heading towards lead-free soldering. But lead-free soldering faces some obstacles, for example cost, resource depletion, energy consumption, and the characteristics of the solder itself etc. The problem of energy consumption is not yet clear. We examined the energy consumption of PWB with lead-free solder comparing to the conventional tin-lead solder. The results show that lead-free soldering will increase the energy consumption. But this increase of energy occupies about only 0.1% of the energy consumption in the electronics industry. Meanwhile, if this increase triggers replacement with a new reflow oven, the energy consumption of PWB with lead-free solder is less than present systems.