Metrics for minimising environmental impacts while maximising circularity in biobased products: The case of lignin-based asphalt

Achieving a circular economy (CE) is seen by society and policymakers as crucial to achieving a sustainable, resource-efficient, renewable and competitive economy. Given the current threat of climate change, we must develop new products that not only maximise the circularity of resources but also minimise climate change impacts. While these two goals are usually aligned, trade-offs exist. For instance, recycling biobased asphalt is a better end-of-life option than landfilling from a resource efficiency perspective. However, landfilling of biogenic non-biodegradable material leads to permanent carbon storage and, therefore, climate benefits. To fully understand the potential benefits and impacts of biobased circular innovations, we need metrics to capture their complexity from both a circular and climate point of view. This study explores the use of different circularity and sustainability metrics to understand the impacts and trade-offs of lignin-based versus bitumen-based asphalts. The analysis is done by calculating the Material Circularity Index (MCI) and two newly developed indicators quantifying the biogenic carbon storage (BCS) of products (BCS100 and c-BCS) while following the CE principles. In addition, the impacts regarding climate change, life cycle costs and ECI (environmental costs indicator) are also provided. Based on the MCI, it can be concluded that lignin-based asphalt roads have slightly higher material circularity than their bitumen-based counterparts. The BCS analysis indicated that the least circular lignin-based alternative sequesters the highest amount of carbon in the long term due to permanent storage in foundations. Despite these trade-offs, the results from the newly developed BCS indicators allowed to align both climate and circularity goals, guiding policymakers and industry actors to implement circular biobased strategies where the value of biobased materials is optimised. Finally, this article discusses the use of different circularity and environmental metrics for decision making in the context of a circular biobased economy

Standards and Regulations for the Bio‐based Industry STAR4BBI

This report describes possible solution directions to overcome market entry barriers due to regulation and standardisation that companies that are active in the bio‐based economy experience. The market entry barriers were investigated and described in the deliverable D2.1. Five main hurdles were described in D2.1:‐ A number of issues around End‐of‐Life of bio‐based products‐ Certification and standards‐ Biofuel policy, and the fact that supporting policy for bio‐based products is missing‐ Missing long term policy that helps to promote bio‐based products‐ Communication and image.In order to define possible solution routes to the hurdles, for each hurdle the relevant stakeholders and their drivers towards the hurdle were investigated. Based on this investigation directions for solutions were defined and discussed with various stakeholders. Furthermore a workshop was held where the solutions were presented and discussed with a broad group of stakeholders.Solution directions defined for the first four identified hurdles are:‐ End‐of‐Life issues: There is no general agreement on which EOL option is most preferable for a several bio‐based products. This relates to present regulations, recycling targets, and industrial operation practices and business models of waste processors. All parties involved would benefit from clear LCA data for EOL options for (groups of) products. This would allow governments, municipalities, consumers and waste processors to decide which product best goes where. Clear icons indicating the preferable EOL, EU wide can help to minimise products going into the “wrong” bin. And in particular cases it may be useful to indicate what is not the desired EOL route, e.g. for products which look like a particularmaterial but in fact are not. Furthermore research on recycling of bio‐based plastics and composting of biodegradable plastics is proposed with both the bio‐based plastics suppliers and the waste processors being stakeholders in the project.‐ Certification and standards: Several possible solutions are proposed to overcome the hurdle related to certification and standards. In principle, it is important to involve as many stakeholders as possible in the standardization process, in order to achieve a widely supported middle ground that corresponds as well as possible with everyday practice. Besides this, to give new materials the possibility to enter the market, standards should focus on the functioning of materials instead of the material itself. In the field of certificates, solutions lie in mutual compatibility, alignment and transparency in tests. However, aligning all involved parties can be (politically) challenging due to competition (between schemes). Moreover, amending standards is time consuming, but in the endthese proposed solutions could open the door more easily to new bio‐based materials. ‐ Biofuel policy: The RED puts pressure on availability and price of biomass for bio‐based products. Different options are considered as potential solutions. One option is to reform the RED in order to integrate bio‐based chemicals and materials. Another option is without changing the RED to create a link of bio‐based materials to the RED through a “bio‐ticket” system. The third option considered is a new directive special for bio‐based materials. Furthermore a harmonized classification system of wastes and residues across EU isnecessary, which needs to be implemented under the EU Waste Framework Directive (WFD). Where the use of feedstocks by the bio‐based products industry is possible, such Elimination of hurdles in standards and regulation uses must be incentivized. The same classification system that will be needed to bedeveloped by the WFD will need to be adopted by the Biofuel policy for defining the feedstocks of “advanced biofuels”.‐ Missing long term policy: In order to level the playing field between fossil‐based and biobased products two possible solutions are proposed. In the first place, the producer should be responsible for paying for the negative externalities of the production processes (e.g. possible damage to the environment) and not the whole society. Furthermore, sustainablecertifications, currently often asked only for bio‐based products, should be requested for all products. The lack of clear, robust methodologies and criteria for assessing the sustainability of both bio‐based and fossil‐based products represents a major gap that is hampering the future development of the bio‐based industry. Development of the same sustainability criteria for all types of feedstock (bio‐based and fossil based) and all sectors (materials and fuels/energy) across the whole life‐cycle (material production, use and EOL)is proposed as a potential solution. And harmonization of LCA procedures is described to be important for this. During the investigation process it was found that the fifth hurdle, communication and image, was an integral part of the other four hurdles, it was therefore not investigated and presented separately, but integral with the other hurdles. The solution directions described in this report are focused specifically on the hurdles that were collected in D2.1 by interviewing a number of companies. During the investigation also more general aspects to stimulate the introduction of bio‐based products came up. An overview of these is presented in appendix A.The analysis laid down in this report has served as the basis for a deeper investigation and proposals to overcome specific market barriers, which are presented in D4.4, and proposals for supporting policy, presented in D3.3

D4.4 Regulation action plan

The bioeconomy is a new market field that was not considered when most of the existing regula-tions were drafted in several areas, including, for example, regulations on the end-of-life (EOL) stage of plastics. Consequentially, even though an EU bioeconomy strategy exists, a coherent and coor-dinated policy framework is still missing1. In addition, the lack of necessary mechanisms (e.g. regu-lative carbon pricing) and the fact that existing policies and standards are mostly based only on fossil-based products (e.g. existing EOL schemes are focused on fossil-based products and do not consider bio-based counterparts) are hampering the development of the bioeconomy

Evaluation of septoplasty patients with health status scale, rhinomanometry, and computed tomography

Amaç: Deviye nazal septum (DNS) tanısı konan hastalarda spesifik yaşam kalitesi septoplasti öncesi ve sonrasında değerlendirildi; ayrıca, tanının laboratuvar bulgularla (anterior rinomanometri ve bilgisayarlı tomografi) ilişkisi incelendi. Hastalar ve Yöntemler: Çalışmaya DNS tanısı konan 39 hasta (8 kadın, 31 erkek; ort. yaş 41; dağılım 18-59) alındı. Hastalar septoplasti öncesinde, koronal planda paranazal sinüs tomografisi, anterior rinomanometri ve Burun Tıkanıklığı Şikayet Değerlendirme Formu (BTŞDF) ile incelendi. Ameliyat sonrası üçüncü ayda anterior rinomanometri ve BTŞDF tekrarlandı. Bulgular: Hastaların BTŞDF puanlarında ameliyat öncesine göre anlamlı azalma (p0.05). Sonuç: Burun tıkanıklığı yakınmasının değerlendirilmesinde BTŞDF yaşam kalitesi ölçeği olarak kullanılabilecek bir testtir. Tanı için rinomanometri veya bilgisayarlı tomografinin mutlak gerekliliği yoktur.Objectives: We evaluated disease-specific health status prior to and after septoplasty in patients with nasal septal deviation (NSD), and sought correlation between diagnosis and laboratory findings (anterior rhinomanometry and computed tomography). Patients and Methods: The study included 39 patients (8 females, 31 males; mean age 41 years; range 18 to 59 years) with a diagnosis of NSD. Prior to septoplasty, all patients were evaluated by coronal paranasal sinus computed tomography (CT), anterior rhinomanometry and the Nasal Obstruction Symptom Evaluation (NOSE) scale. Rhinomanometry and the NOSE scale were repeated three months after septoplasty. Results: Compared to the preoperative values, the patients exhibited a significant decrease in NOSE scores, and in rhinomanometry, significantly increased nasal airflow and decreased total nasal airway resistance (p0.05). Conclusion: The NOSE scale is a reliable test to assess health status of patients with nasal obstruction symptoms. The diagnosis of NSD does not require rhinomanometry or computed tomography

Fluidic separation in microstructured devices – concepts and their Integration into process flow networks

FDA and pharmaceutical industry turn the vision of integrated end-to-end manufacturing currently into reality. Accordingly, besides the efforts to develop reactions in continuous flow, it is also essential to consider separation of reaction mixtures and purification of the desired product - and how these are best integrated into a process design. In this context, the coupling of flow reactors and flow separators as well as coupling of different flow separators, regarded as hybrid processes, are considered. This review shows current successful developments on fluidic separation units and their integration in process flow networks, in which reactors and separators are connected. The review also gives developments on countercurrent-flow separation units, which are necessary for highly-efficient, continuous processing. Such multiple equilibrium steps are necessary, but hard to achieve for small flow rates

Fluidic separation in microstructured devices – concepts and their Integration into process flow networks

FDA and pharmaceutical industry turn the vision of integrated end-to-end manufacturing currently into reality. Accordingly, besides the efforts to develop reactions in continuous flow, it is also essential to consider separation of reaction mixtures and purification of the desired product - and how these are best integrated into a process design. In this context, the coupling of flow reactors and flow separators as well as coupling of different flow separators, regarded as hybrid processes, are considered. This review shows current successful developments on fluidic separation units and their integration in process flow networks, in which reactors and separators are connected. The review also gives developments on countercurrent-flow separation units, which are necessary for highly-efficient, continuous processing. Such multiple equilibrium steps are necessary, but hard to achieve for small flow rates

Separation/recycling methods for homogeneous transition metal catalysts in continuous flow

Catalytic processes are of paramount importance in the chemical industry. Homogeneous catalysts are of great interest for synthesizing fine-chemical/specialty chemical/pharmaceutical products for their advantages of high activity and selectivity. However, their separation from the product remains a challenge. Transition metals and especially platinum group metals are used extensively as catalysts. They are expensive and there are strict regulations on the permitted levels of these metals in pharmaceutical products. Therefore, their effective separation is required. Moreover, we are running short of these and many other valuable metals. This puts more emphasis on the need to separate these homogeneous metal catalysts in their active form and recycle them back to the reactor. This review aims to provide the reader with an overview of the current literature on the separation/recycling methods of homogeneous transition metal catalysts in continuous flow. These include heterogenization, scavenging, using biphasic systems and organic solvent nanofiltration. There are numerous successful demonstrations on the laboratory scale and recently also on the industrial scale

Process-Design Intensification - Direct synthesis of adipic acid in flow

Micro process technology and flow chemistry have given a strong push to continuous chemical manufacture. This was based on the so-called transport intensification field which considerably improves mass and heat transfer given by the miniaturization of flow dimensions. The emerging second chemical intensification field uses highly intensified, unusual and typically harsh process conditions to boost micro-processing (Hessel et al., 2012). Beyond these, a third Process-Design Intensification Field heads for integrated and simplified flow process design in a more holistic picture. Chemical and process-design intensification constitute Novel Process Windows. As first-hour demonstration example for the latter, the direct oxidation of cyclohexene with hydrogen peroxide for adipic acid synthesis provides an innovative alternative to the industrial technologies currently being used. Profound simplification of the process scheme leads to fewer unit operations enabling reduction of investment cost, although the microreactor costs are higher than those of the batch reactor. Through simplification or elimination of energy intensive separation units energy consumption is reduced significantly. This leads to lower utility requirement and lowers the operating cost

Life cycle assessment for the direct synthesis of adipic acid in microreactors and benchmarking to the commercial process

A check on environmental sustainability of microreaction technology is given based on a new process idea as a study case, which is the direct synthesis of adipic acid (ADA) in a continuous flow process using a milli-packed bed reactor with micro-sized fluid interstices. Main aim is to determine impactful process parameters and to have a holistic idea of the environmental profile for this new process by means of life cycle assessment. Second main aim is to benchmark the flow process against conventional technology to produce ADA which takes place in two steps.Whereas the conventional process for ADA synthesis occurs in two steps from oxidation of cyclohexane by air followed by nitration oxidation, the direct route is from cyclohexene and uses hydrogen peroxide as oxidant. This results in higher ADA yield and simplified process with one step less. Drawbacks of the direct synthesis are long reaction time and increased safety issues, which can be overcome by using microreactors. The reaction rate is increased by the largely improved mass transfer and the use of higher temperature.Life cycle assessment (LCA) shows that for a number of impact categories the direct process is greener; yet there are also categories for which the conventional route is more environmentally sustainable. The results, analyzed from cradle to factory gate, shed some light on the truth and comprehensiveness of the statement frequently found in the literature, that H2O2 is a green oxidant because of atom economy and non-toxicity of water produced (Noyori et al., 2003; Grigoropoulo et al., 2003; Usui and Sato, 2003; Podgorsek et al., 2009; Edwards et al., 2005; Tse et al., 2005) [1-6]. Further, cooling energy plays also an important role for the environmental profile. In this way, fast decisions and recommendations for process variants in the newly designed route can be given and lead to a more focused research plan which is exemplified at the end of the paper