Resource optimization and sustainable manufacturing in the development of a self‐chilling beverage can

Every year in Europe more than 30Mt of CO2e are emitted from retail refrigerators (Cowan et al., 2010). This is due to the leakages of HFC and HCFC that have adverse impacts on climate change not only because they are powerful greenhouse gases, but also because leaking systems are less energy efficient (Bovea et al., 2007; Cowan et al., 2010). Both the energy consumption worldwide and the high emissions of greenhouse gases have directed interest to alternative solutions to conventional refrigeration systems. To this end, a new technology has been designed to supply cooled products on demand using the cooling effect provided by the endothermic desorption of carbon dioxide previously adsorbed onto a bed of activated carbon. The principles of life cycle engineering have been utilized to evaluate the overall environmental performance of one possible application of this technology: a self-chilling beverage container with a steel outer can to contain the beverage and an inner aluminium can to contain the adsorbent. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Dynamics of Stocks and Flows in a Regenerative Economy

This seminar will present a “trailer” for material in a book – “Living well on a Finite Planet: a systems approach to sustainability, society and economy” - by Roland Clift, George Martin and Simon Mair, to be published by Springer in 2023. The book will develop an approach to socio-economic restructuring that looks beyond the Circular Economy to envisage a repurposed economy addressing the three components of sustainability: economy, environment, and society. Rather than the usual economic concern with flows, the analysis takes an industrial ecology approach: it starts from demand for the services provided by the stock of products and materials in use and works out from there, through analysis of remanufacturing and recycling, to the associated material flows which are treated as responses rather than drivers. An earlier analysis, developed by Stahel and Clift, has been extended to stocks that change over time, to generate simple metrics accounting for the effect of stock growth on material demand allowing for product life. Applying the analysis to selected scarce metals shows how it can help to understand the development of “closed loop” systems. It also reveals why setting targets in terms of “circularity” can have perverse consequences

Forestry Waste in British Columbia ‐ overcoming bad habits and perverse life cycle accounting

The western Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) is renowned for its extensive forests and forestry sector. For a number of historical reasons, practices for “harvesting” trees are BC is wasteful, with large quantities of material left to be destroyed by open-air “slash burning” to avoid providing potential fuel for wildfires. This unused waste is analogous to agricultural waste, or process waste from industrial production. It potentially represents a significant energy resource, equivalent to about 20% of the fossil fuels used in BC. This contribution will cover: - why a potential resource is currently discarded; - how combining LCA with economic analysis identifies the Pareto-optimal uses for the waste, both domestically and as an internationally traded commodity; - why the supply chain means that Canadian wood pellets sold into European markets have a different life cycle environmental profile compared to pellets from other sources; - how current international agreements on accounting for life cycle emissions of greenhouse gases give perverse signals that discourage production of wood pellets in BC. Although the case study is specific to BC, it illustrates a number of general principles in and barriers to “valorisation” of materials currently regarded as waste

Forestry Waste in British Columbia - overcoming bad habits and perverse life cycle accounting

The western Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) is renowned for its extensive forests and forestry sector. For a number of historical reasons, practices for “harvesting” trees are BC is wasteful, with large quantities of material left to be destroyed by open-air “slash burning” to avoid providing potential fuel for wildfires. This unused waste is analogous to agricultural waste, or process waste from industrial production. It potentially represents a significant energy resource, equivalent to about 20% of the fossil fuels used in BC. This contribution will cover: - why a potential resource is currently discarded; - how combining LCA with economic analysis identifies the Pareto-optimal uses for the waste, both domestically and as an internationally traded commodity; - why the supply chain means that Canadian wood pellets sold into European markets have a different life cycle environmental profile compared to pellets from other sources; - how current international agreements on accounting for life cycle emissions of greenhouse gases give perverse signals that discourage production of wood pellets in BC. Although the case study is specific to BC, it illustrates a number of general principles in and barriers to “valorisation” of materials currently regarded as waste

An analysis of developing energy systems: an overview

Energy mixes are continuously evolving according to technological development, economics, society, energy demand and legislation. Environmental impact of future energy technologies must be addressed through a comprehensive framework to guarantee a sustainable development. For many centuries, the energy supply to the UK has been based on coal and natural gas. However, legislation and more environmental awareness are pushing towards greener and more stable energy supply, including, electricity from waste, bio-methane, unconventional natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG). These and other energy sources constitute the projected future of the UK energy supply. The objective of this work is to develop a comprehensive framework based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology that can assist decision makers in the evaluation of the environmental burdens of developing energy sources and technologies. Hence, key technologies for the future UK energy mix are tackled. Firstly, advanced and conventional waste-to-electricity technologies, such as pyrolysis, plasma-gasification and combustion are analysed, within a framework of diverting waste from landfill and produce renewable energy. Then, the burden of biomethane production from waste is analysed: advanced thermal conversion and anaerobic digestion are compared according to current and future energy mixes. Fossil energy sources such as shale gas and LNG are also considered as they are expected to play an important role in the future UK energy mix. This work demonstrates how the LCA framework can be used to draw guidelines for a future, aware, energy development. The outputs of this assessment provide valuable information to stakeholders and policy makers to be correctly informed, and can help in planning new policy legislations or tune the existing ones

Managing Plastics: Uses, Losses and Disposal

The term ‘plastic’ refers to a wide range of different materials with diverse properties and uses. Plastics are essential in a modern industrial economy. Plastic pollution results from the ‘leakage’ of plastics into the unconfined environment at all stages of the product cycle, not just following use, so the highest priority to prevent continuing pollution is to ensure that all plastics remain within the economy. The ‘circular economy’ approach may reduce but cannot eliminate plastic pollution without effective measures to prevent leakage. Measures to prevent leakage must be based on understanding of how plastics are brought into and moved through the economy; of the practical options for reducing demand for fresh plastic, re-using and recycling plastic products, and managing final waste; and on prioritizing development of alternative materials for specific uses. Even if leakages of plastic into the environment are curtailed, the legacy of plastic pollution over the last seventy years will remain, particularly in the oceans. Marine plastic litter is a problem of the Global Commons and requires global action for its collection.\ua0 Currently, landfilling of collected marine plastic debris is the only feasible option but, if economic uses can be found, this will partially offset future demand for fresh plastics

Valorization of energetic material from ammunition in civil explosives

Ammunitions that have reached the end of life (or become obsolete) are considered hazardous waste. The Armed Forces have significant amounts of ammunition (a residue with high energy content) that need to be eliminated. Currently, in Portugal and other developed countries, ammunition is disposed of in incinerators with sophisticated gas treatment systems; however, this decommissioning process has important limitations in terms of incinerator capacity, high costs and energy requirements (Ferreira et al., 2013). This paper describes the valorization of ammunition by incorporation into civil explosives, as an alternative to conventional decommissioning. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to assess the potential energy and environmental benefits of incorporating energetic material in ammonium nitrate (AN) based emulsions, civil explosives widely used for mining and road construction, allowing for the displacement of both disposal of military explosives and production of an equivalent quantity of civil explosives. Previous work involving experiments with energetic material incorporated in AN emulsion has shown that a simple processing technique (grinding) is sufficient to blend the energetic material into the emulsion matrix, with no formation of new chemical species. A life-cycle model has been implemented based on primary data for the grinding process and on previous studies on conventional decommissioning processes (Ferreira et al., 2013) and production of ammonium nitrate emulsion (Ferreira et al., 2015). The model implemented follows the “avoided burdens” approach to calculate the environmental burdens avoided when 1 kg of TNT equivalent from ammunition is incorporated into civil explosives. Results were calculated based on three complementary life-cycle impact assessment methods: primary energy, six environmental impact categories (CML), and three toxicological categories (USEtox).The results show that re-using ammunition through valorization of energetic material has considerably lower impacts (approximately 80% for all categories) compared to conventional decommissioning, mainly due to avoided incineration and gas treatment. C. Ferreira, J. Ribeiro, R. Mendes, F. Freire, Life-Cycle Assessment of Ammunition Demilitarization in a Static Kiln, Propellants Explos. Pyrotech. 38, 2013, 296 – 302. C. Ferreira, F. Freire, J. Ribeiro, Life-cycle assessment of a civil explosive, Journal of Cleaner Production 89, 2015, 159 – 164

Ecometrics: Identification, categorization and life cycle validation

Indicators which reflect environmental, economic, health and safety issues, have been categorized as microecometrics and macroecometrics. The former, generally flow based measures, have been developed for local, firm-wide or product based assessments. Microecometrics include materials intensity, energy consumption and emissions data, often from life cycle perspectives. They are, generally, intensive and are scaled with respect to unit of production, GDP or per capita, though other normalization factors have been proposed. In contrast macroecometrics tend to be extensive and represent global conditions such as temperatures and environmental concentrations. Ecometrics are subjective and reflect the dominant value of the individual, family unit, stakeholder group or firm. As such overaggregating or reducing the number of ecometrics for given applications, such as the rating of investments or access to credit, presents potential conflicts. Furthermore, while eco-indicators used for internal corporate reporting should not, necessarily, be validated, those microecometrics which involve external reporting, or multiple stakeholders, are arbitrary if not derived from, or based on, comprehensive life cycle approaches. This paper summarizes ECOMETRICS'98, a workshop held in Lausanne, Switzerland in January 19-20, 1998. It discusses ecometric needs of various users including consumers, designers, private sector decision makers as well as politicians and policy makers. A discussion regarding appropriate microecometrics for industrial sectors including chemical, pharmaceutical, insurance, finance, electronics, manufacturing and consumer products is also summarize

Industrial constructions of publics and public knowledge: a qualitative investigation of practice in the UK chemicals industry

This is a post print version of the article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below - © 2007 by SAGE PublicationsWhile the rhetoric of public engagement is increasingly commonplace within industry, there has been little research that examines how lay knowledge is conceptualized and whether it is really used within companies. Using the chemicals sector as an example, this paper explores how companies conceive of publics and "public knowledge," and how this relates to modes of engagement/communication with them. Drawing on qualitative empirical research in four companies, we demonstrate that the public for industry are primarily conceived as "consumers" and "neighbours," having concerns that should be allayed rather than as groups with knowledge meriting engagement. We conclude by highlighting the dissonance between current advocacy of engagement and the discourses and practices prevalent within industry, and highlight the need for more realistic strategies for industry/public engagement.Funding was received from the ESRC Science in Society Programme