A Systems Ecology Approach to Life-Cycle Product Assessment and Process Design (TSE99-H)

Ohio State University Research Foundation -Do Not Use, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

9985554 Bakshi This work is motivated by the paradigm of industrial ecology which suggests that to achieve environmental sustainability, industrial systems should emulate ecological systems. The research is based on considering energy to be the primary driving force for the development and health of ecological systems. Thus, the ecological contribution into any product or service can be measured in terms of the amount of energy required directly or indirectly for its manufacture. This embodied energy, or emergy, is a measure of the ecological resources invested in any product or service, or its ecological cost. The objective of this project is to develop new methods for life cycle product assessment and process design based on emergy analysis. Emergy-based life cycle assessment (LCA) of products will combine the features of LCA with emergy analysis to result in a method that overcomes the shortcomings of these techniques individually. The resulting method will combine ecological and economic considerations, and provide ways of comparing the environmental and economic sustainability of various products. New approaches will be developed for an ecologically-based valuation of environmental impacts. The existing hierarchical approach to process design will be augmented by evaluating the ecological cost at each scale of the hierarchy. Such an approach will also be developed for retrofitting existing processes to minimize ecological impact or to meet sustainability standards. A mathematical programming approach to design will use the economic and ecological objective functions together, with sustainability requirements posed as constraints. New teaching material for introducing life cycle thinking into the chemical engineering curriculum will be developed, forming the basis for a new course in ecologically sensitive process engineering. This grant is made pursuant to the NSF/EPA Partnership competition Technologies for a Sustainable Environment. ***