Short Programs

Energy, Sustainability, and Life Cycle Assessment [2.50s]

Date: June 11-13, 2012 | Tuition: $2,250 | Continuing Education Units (CEUs): 1.5
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Course Summary  |  Learning Objectives  |  Who Should Attend  |  Program Outline  |  Schedule  | 
About the Lecturers  |  Location  |  Links & Resources  |  Updates

Course Summary

The purpose of this class is to address the issue of sustainability from an engineering perspective. First we review the concept of sustainability from several points of view including economics, ecology, and engineering. This discussion includes the widely used “Triple Bottom Line” approach of industry. The current state of the “Science of Sustainability” will be reviewed. We then develop a resource accounting perspective in some detail with the emphasis in four areas:

1) energy resources analysis, energy flows, balances, efficiencies, primary energy use, energy return on investment, net energy analysis, renewable energy.

2) material resources analysis (including not only the materials used in the delivery of products and services, but also the effects on major material cycles such as carbon, water, and nitrogen). This approach will be expanded to aggregate both fuels and non-fuel materials by using an exergy analysis approach.

3) life cycle assessment of products and services (including variations on the method such as input-output models, hybrid models, and exergy models and a critique of the utility of LCA).

4) accounting for the role of ecosystem services in supporting industrial activities.

The class uses our new book Thermodynamics and the Destruction of Resources (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and builds these topics from a solid basis. Examples will be taken from diverse areas but with special attention to current and emerging chemical and manufacturing processes and product analysis. Participants are encouraged to bring sample cases for discussion, and class will include time for hands-on LCA for products and services of your choice.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify alternative interpretations of Sustainability, including economic, ecological, business (e.g. Triple Bottom Line), and resource accounting. Assess the importance of these views to your own situation. Apply resource accounting methods to sustainability problems.
2. Review Thermodynamic Principles as an example of a rigorous approach to resource accounting. Apply energy and exergy accounting to new situations.
3. Analyze Energy Transformation and Materials Transformation Processes using various resource accounting approaches. Examples will include chemical and manufacturing processes, recycling, nanotechnology, transportation fuels, and others.
4. Explore Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), including advanced LCA methods. Apply these methods to new situations and analyze products and services.
5. Examine resource accounting at multiple scales, including carbon, water, nitrogen, and ecosystem services.

Who Should Attend

This class is intended for engineers and managers from manufacturing, design, energy, and sustainability, as well as for academics (faculty, researchers, and graduate students).

Program Outline

References below are from the book Thermodynamics and the Destruction of Resources, Bakshi, Gutowski, and Sekulic, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Day One
Session 1--1.5 hours
Introduction and overview: sustainability from various perspectives, eco-systems ecology, economics, business, and engineering. Discussion on how to make the sustainability concept operational. Basic resource accounting issues: aggregation, substitutability, allocation, and discounting. (Gutowski, Intro, Chapter 19).

Break

Session 2--1.5 hours
Resource accounting and material flows. Introduction to various methods for quantifying the role of resources in process analysis and LCA. This will include methods based on mass and energy including materials flow accounting and energy analysis and its variations. Examples will demonstrate the challenges in defining aggregate metrics and the importance of accounting for differences in the quality of various resources. Advanced methods based on the second law of thermodynamics and methods that account for the role of ecosystem services will also be introduced. (Bakshi, Chapter 3).

Lunch

Session 3--1.5 hours
Definition of the system, properties, states, conservation principles, balance equations, and concept of efficiency. Defining a system well – formulating approach, open and closed systems (examples from natural, industry, and societal domains), defining the state of the system in terms of properties, process metrics and performance figures of merit, additiveness and conservativeness of state properties, and balance equations (properties and interactions). (Sekulic, Chapters 1 and 2).

Break

Session 4--1.5 hours
Introduction to Life Cycle Assessment, Process Models and Input Output Models, and Eco-Audits. Includes a comparison of models, issues of accuracy, and several applications. Some hands-on LCA activites. (Gutowski, Chapters 13 and14).

Day Two
Session 5--1.5 hours
A rigorous approach to transformational technologies selection from the energy resources utilization point of view. State of sustainability and resource utilization of a technological process, metrics for sustainability assessment, thermodynamic metrics for energy utilization, a detailed comparative study of obsolete, state-of-the-art, and ideal technology for a given technology. Engineering of the system and energy flows. (Sekulic, Chapter 5).

Break

Session 6--1.5 hours
Energy and materials analysis for manufacturing processes and systems. Systems are viewed at many scales, including world and U.S. industries. Processes include many types: machining process, melting processes, semiconductor processes, MEMS, nano, and others. (Gutowski, Sekulic, Chapters 4 and 6).

Session 6b
Thermoeconomics Analysis for Energy Systems and Processes. (Sekulic, Chapter 15).

Lunch

Session 7--1.5 hours
Advanced Life Cycle Assessment, technologies, and examples. Hybrid LCA – ways of combining input-output models with process level life cycle information. Ecologically-based LCA – incorporating the role of ecosystem services in LCA and hierarchical metrics. (Bakshi, Chapters 3 and 9).

Break

Session 8--1.5 hours
Examples for large systems including eco-systems resource accounting. Hands-on experience with Eco-LCA for LCA at economy scale and hybrid Eco-LCA. Examples such as comparison of drinking water cups, biofuels, and others will be demonstrated. Participants will be encouraged to bring their own examples and data. (Bakshi, Chapters 3, 9, and 12).

Day Three
Session 9--1.5 hours
Carbon, water, and nitrogen; Bio-chemical-physical material cycles; accounting for anthropogenic and natural carbo;, nitrogen and water flows in LCA. Carbon, nitrogen, and water footprints including biofuels and water supply. (Bakshi, Sekulic, and Gutowski, Chapter 19).

Break

Session 10--1.5 hours
Industrial examples: energy/exergy flows in a mass production of automotive heat exchangers (description of technology, resources issues, balances and efficiencies). Process level, energy/exergy flows in electronics industry (PCB production). Process level, energy use at a MEMS plant, nanomanufacturing – polymer nanocomposites, biofuels.
(Sekulic, Bakshi, and Gutowski, Chapters 2 and 8).

Lunch

Session 11
Q & A (Gutowski, Bakshi and Sekulic)

Course schedule and registration times

Class runs 9:00 am - 4:45 pm each day except for Wednesday when it ends at 4:00pm.

Registration is on Monday morning from 8:15 - 8:45 am.

Special events include a dinner for course participants and faculty on Tuesday night.
Evening activities are included in tuition.

About the Lecturers

Timothy Gutowski received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981. Currently he is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and a member of the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity (LMP). He was the Director of the LMP from 1994 to 2004, and the Associate Department Head for Mechanical Engineering from 2001 to 2005. From 1999 to 2001 he was the chairman of the National Science Foundation/Department of Energy panel on Environmentally Benign Manufacturing. He has over 150 technical publications and seven patents and patent applications. He is the editor of the book Advanced Composites Manufacturing, published by John Wiley in 1997.

Professor Gutowski’s research over the past 10 years has focused on the environmental issues associated with processes, products, and services. His work on manufacturing processes is extensive, including the analysis (energy and materials) of such processes as machining; grinding; casting; forming and injection molding; advanced machining processes such as abrasive waterjet and electrical discharge machining; semiconductor and MEMS processes such as CVD, PECVD, and various etching processes; and nano-materials manufacturing processes such as HiPCO and CVD. In addition, he has worked extensively on recycling processes, systems, and product design for recycling, as well as on product remanufacturing and energy savings. His work also includes the energy payback analysis for new energy systems during growth, and LCA applied to personal life styles called “Life Style Analysis”.

Bhavik Bakshi received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology along with a minor in Technology and Environmental Policy. Currently, he holds a dual appointment as a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The Ohio State University, and Vice Chancellor and Professor of Energy and Environment at TERI University in New Delhi, India. He is also the Research Director of the Center for Resilience at OSU. From 2006 to 2010, he was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai, India. He has published more than 100 articles in areas such as Process Systems Engineering and Sustainability Science and Engineering.

Professor Bakshi has active research programs in the U.S. and in India, which are developing systematic and scientifically rigorous methods for improving the sustainability and efficiency of engineering activities. This includes new methods for analyzing the life cycle of existing and emerging technologies, designing self-reliant networks of technological and ecological systems, and dealing with uncertainty. A major focus of his research has been on understanding and including the role of ecosystem services in industrial activities. This multidisciplinary research overlaps with areas such as thermodynamics, applied statistics, ecology, economics, and complexity theory. Applications include nanotechnology, green chemistry, alternate fuels, and waste utilization. His group has recently released on-line software for Ecologically-Based LCA (Eco-LCA), which is available at http://resilience.osu.edu/ecolca/.

Dusan Sekulic received his D.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1982. Currently he is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA. He is a fellow of ASME and is a consulting professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, PR China. He is the author of over 150 refereed research publications, more than a dozen book chapters, and the author of the book Fundamentals of Heat Exchanger Design (jointly with R.K. Shah), published by John Wiley & Sons, USA in English, and China Machine Press, Beijing, in Chinese. He is the editor of the book Advances in Brazing: Science, Technology and Applications, Woodhead, Cambridge, UK, and Editor of the Handbook of Heat Exchanger Design, Begell House, NY, USA.

Professor Sekulic’s research has been on thermodynamics aspects of energy and non-energy producing systems. His work on thermal design of heat exchangers used in these systems is extensive. His focus over the past ten years has been on materials processing in various manufacturing processes, in particular experimental and theoretical work in the domain of molten metal wetting and spreading for materials processing related to soldering and brazing. His interest involves studies of energy and material flows in large non-energy producing systems, such as in manufacturing, with emphasis on transformational technology selection.

Location

This course takes place on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We can also offer this course for groups of employees at your location. Please contact the Short Programs office for further details.

Links & Resources

News/Articles:

• Calculating the cost of advanced manufacturing - The Environmentally Benign Manufacturing group studies the life cycle of new technologies.
• When is it worth remanufacturing? An MIT study led by Professor Gutowski shows that sometimes it saves energy, and sometimes it doesn’t. May 16, 2011 MIT News.

Updates

There are no updates at this time.