Embedding sustainability in engineering education through interactive industrial design case studies

Abstract

The need for the integration of industrial concepts and applications of sustainability in engineering education is a priority for universities and especially for engineering courses. To deliver the concepts and benefits of sustainable engineering design to students requires something more than just a theoretical overview. The use of case studies in engineering education is well established and a mature concept. The scope and criticality of sustainable development is increasingly complex and diverse and continues to change and adapt as the climate crises deepens. The biotechnology industry is perhaps the youngest of all of the process industries and is changing and adapting rapidly. Combine these two changing dynamics and the result is a compelling argument for interactive design case studies. The design of a manufacturing process within the biopharmaceutical industry is based on various criteria such as capital investment, operating costs, process reliability and safety with an overarching focus on patient safety. While environmental impact and sustainability is a critical area from a global perspective, it has not been a key consideration within the industry with relatively little research into the environmental impact of adopting different processes and technologies. There is a growing demand for multiproduct, flexible facilities with approaches such as modular strategies facilitating easy adaptation for different processes. This places an increasing emphasis on support services such as buffer preparation, where overheads are increasing and bottlenecks are developing. The supply of buffer solutions in particular, accounts for a large proportion of a facility’s footprint, labour, equipment and operating costs. To alleviate the potential bottlenecks, reduce the impact on capital and operational expenditure and improve sustainability, alternative philosophies for buffer management must be considered. Buffer preparation offers an ideal opportunity for collaboration with case studies as it represents a common problem within the industry in a non-competitive space, which has a clear demand for fresh thinking. While there are significant variations in core process technology, buffer preparation remains a key aspect of facility design across differing modalities. This research aims to demonstrate the benefit of exploring the industrial sustainability design space in conjunction with third level engineering education. This synergy with utilise Interactive Design Sessions utilising approaches such as Finite Capacity Analysis to demonstrate the environmental impact of operational strategy and technology utilisation (such as Single Use Technology and inline buffer preparation) on buffer preparation within the biopharmaceutical industry, highlighting the synergy between more sustainable production and a reduction in the cost of manufacturing