STRUCTURE
The sustainability Section is organized into 4 subsections:
1. Sustainable materials, products, and circular economy supply chains
Coordinator: Michael Short
Material evaluation and development, including renewable feedstocks, sustainable platform chemicals and products. Sustainable and safe materials by design (SSbD) including green solvents. Methods and tools to cope with physical and thermodynamic properties of non-conventional materials (biomass, waste, textiles, bio-based products and intermediates). Links to major projects and events in this area. Characterization of non-conventional chemicals. Review and analysis of sustainability gaps in major supply chains (e.g. plastics, fuels, specialty chemicals). Promote circularity and the need to re-enter material flows in the supply chains by re-use, and regeneration.
2 - Systems engineering and systems thinking for sustainable manufacturing
Coordinator: Seyed Mansouri
Sustainability thinking for process design. Tools for process efficiencies, and raw material efficiencies (e.g. by means of process integration and process intensification). Ex-post and ex-ante LCA. The analysis of manufacturing footprints in process design. Advanced modelling, and digital applications for sustainability. Modelling technology and data engineering including the use of AI. Systems engineering and machine learning as a driver for sustainable supply chains and to incentive re-use and recycle.
3 - Education, training and early-stage career development.
Coordinator: Juraj Kosek
Education, training, and the need to promote sustainability to chemical engineering curricula. Discussion of new modules. Organization of workshops and seminars on sustainability assessment, methods and tools. Early-stage career development. Attract young researchers at an early stage of development and prepare them with skills required for the emerging needs on sustainability.
4 - Environmental and Social Governance.
Coordinator: Stelios Bikos
Sustainability as a driver for social acceptance and techno-economic innovation. Legislation and protocols in ESG. Sustainability over greenwashing. Links to platforms to access information and data, and KPIs.