Xun Jin School of Chemical Engineering Oklahoma State University

1. CHE 4343 Environmental Engineering Sustainability Seminar April 19, 2004, EN516 Producing Today and Preserving TomorrowLooking at SUSTAINABILITY from a Chemical Engineer’s Perspective Xun Jin School of Chemical Engineering Oklahoma State University

2. Outline • From utopia to real • Sustainability in general • Why? • History and Milestones • Concept and characteristics • Sustainability from Chemical Engineers’ perspective • Difficulties and challenges • Sustainability Assessment • Metrics • Frameworks • Decision Making for sustainability

3. A Utopia ? Communism Communism is a society without money, without a state, without property and without social classes. …… The circulation of goods is not accomplished by means of exchange: quite the contrary, the by-word for this society is "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs". Karl Marx 1818-1883 Feb. 23, 1948 Vladimir Lenin 1870-1924 Apr. 24, 1964 Zedong Mao 1893-1976 Jan. 13, 1967

4. Real ? Sustainable Development “The development that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the future generations to meet their own needs”. (WCED, 1987) “Improving the quality of life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems…” (UNEP, 1991) “…You are not robbing Peter to pay Paul…” (W. Stavropoulos, Dow CEO) Earth Jan. 2, 1989 Energy Jul. 2, 1979 Global Warming Apr. 9, 2001

5. Questions to ask Are they ideologically great concepts? Are these concepts submitted at a right time? Is the way that they were interpreted realistic? How far are they from implementation? How many things we can do to move closer? What lesson we can learn from the “story of communism”?

6. Why sustainability? Fact 1: IPCC predicts a 5.8 temperature rise in this century. Fact 2: The U.S. is home to 5% of the world's population, yet consumes 26% of the world's energy. Fact 3: In the US, 86% of apple; 95% of cabbage, 91% of field maize and 81% of tomato varieties no longer exist . Fact 4: by the year 2025, two-thirds of the world’s peoples will suffer from water shortages

7. History and Milestones • Environmentalism: the Precursor • 1830s New England Transcendentalist Movement • 1901 Muir’s book “Our National Parks” • 1962 Carson’s book “Silent Spring” • 1970 First Earth Day • 1970s Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, EPA • Contemporary Environmentalism • 1972 UN’s Conference on Human Environment and UNEP • 1981 Brown published “ Building a Sustainable Society”

8. History and Milestones (cont.) • Emergence of sustainability • 1987 WCED published “Our Common Future” (Brundtland Report) • 1992 UNCED (Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Agenda 21 in Rio Declaration) • 1993 President’s Council on Sustainable Development, US • 1997 J. Elkington published “Cannibals with Folks” (Triple Bottom Line) • 2002 Second Earth Summit held in Johannesburg, South Africa

9. What is sustainability ? SUSTAINABILITY ? …… Global warming Biodiversity Ozone Layer National security Renewable energy Fossil fuel Population Landscape Crime rate Eco-efficiency Poverty GDP Acid Rain

10. Global Warming Rising temperature  Rising sea level  Forest Precipitation Crop yields Other climate conditions Water supply Human and eco-health

11. Ozone Upper ozone: Increased UV radiation  Skin cancer Cataract Crop Tree Lower ozone Generated ground level ozone  respiratory system vegetation and ecosystem

12. Sustainability Concept • Huge diversity in conceiving sustainability • Three classes of views • Inter/intra-generation equity view “Fairly developed well-beings of human society not only within but between generations” • Critical limits view “Quality of human life can be improved only within the planet’s carrying capacity” • Competing objective view “Simultaneously meet multiple environmental, economic and social objectives” Environmental Economic Social

13. Sustainability Characteristics • Parris & Kate: “Broad appeal” and “little specificity” • Jin & High:

14. So far we know that • Sustainability is • A grand concept • Ill-defined somehow • Has a short history • Easier said than done • Reconcile two extremes: • Virtually handled in case-specific manner I am sustainable I am sustainable

15. Break & Questions

16. Chemical Engineers’ Perspective Raw materials Products

17. Chemical Engineers’ Difficulties • Conceptual intricacy • Perspective diversity • Knowledge deficiency • Relevancy emphasis

18. Design a Chemical Process • Kinetics • Thermodynamics • Mass, Heat and Momentum Transport • Fluid Mechanics • Modeling • Optimization Flowsheet synthesis & optimization Utility systems & waste treatment Heat exchanger network Separation and recycle systems Reactor

19. Tasks to conquer Williams-Otto Process • How to assess its sustainability performance? • How to make it more sustainable? • How to determine whether it is more sustainable?

20. A solution scheme Green Chemistry Green Engineering Pollution prevention Source reduction End-of-pipe …… Williams-Otto process Assessment ? Decision Making Improvement ? Completion

21. Measuring Environmental Sustainability • Reporting demand - 45% Fortune Global Top 250 companies - 36% Fortune U. S. Top 100 companies - 100% Process Industry sectors publish an annual sustainability report • Chemical Industry - Responsible Care Program - Sustainability Institute AICHE - ICCA Report to the United Nation - Corporate Sustainability Reports

22. Metrics • Applying Metrics is the dominant practice • Metric sets instead of a single metric • International Institute of SD : Over 500 sets • Varies from global, national, regional, local, corporate to site • Some examples: • Dow Jones Sustainability Index • AICHE Sustainability metrics • IChemE Sustainability metrics • Environmental Sustainability Index

23. AICHE Metrics • Mass intensity* (i.e. total mass in/$ of product sold) • Energy intensity* • Greenhouse gases* (i.e. kg CO2 equivalent/ $ of product sold) • Photochemical Ozone Creating Potential* • Acidification* • Eutrophying Substance* • Water usage* • Human health • Ecotoxicity (i.e. Mi * (Pi * BCFi)/LC50,i ) * Each may have one core metric and some complementary metrics

24. Metric Example Benzene Impact from Ground level ozone formation? Metric?

25. Metric Example • Ground level ozone formation

26. # Metric Method/data Source Comments 1 Discharged C6H6 per hour Monitored or design data - Easy to understand and apply - Without reflecting impact 2 Discharged C6H6 per unit production Monitored data or design condition 3 Incremental C6H6 concentration in atmosphere Local or regional environment monitoring data - Without reflecting impact - Lack of affirmative relevancy to the given source 4 Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential (POCP) (Derwent & Jenkin, 1991) - Incremental reactivity based assessment - Trajectory model + Harwell chemical mechanism 5 Maximum Incremental Reactivity (MIR) (Carter, 1994) - Incremental reactivity based assessment - Trajectory model + SAPRC-90 chemical mechanism 6 Updated MIR (Carter, 1998) - Incremental reactivity based assessment - Trajectory model + SAPRC-98 chemical mechanism 7 VOC reactivity (Bergin et al., 1995) - Assessing reactivity - Three dimensional model + SAPRC-90 8 Incremental O3 concentration in atmosphere Local or regional environment monitoring data - Reflect impact on physical condition change of air - Lack of affirmative relevancy to the given source 9 Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) (Murray & Lopez, 1996) - Reflect potential impact on human - Not considering specific fate, exposure and effect. Metric Example (cont.) • Alternative metrics for ground ozone formation

27. Conventional Environmental Performance Metrics Desired Environmental Sustainability Metrics Load Impact Short-term, local Long-term, global (regional) Physical and chemical Biological and ecological impact Discrete Systemic Static Dynamic Nature Science Social science Metric Transformations • Paradigm shift: “Greening” to “Sustaining” - NAE & NRC (1999)

28. Well-being Integrality Effect Immune system suppression Marine life damage Crop damage Material damage Global warming Skin Cancer Cataracts Increased UVB Destroyed ozone Status Released Cl-, Br- A SSEIW Hierarchy • Stressor: The discharges associating with a given human activity • Status: The induced state change of the exact environmental compartment that the stressors are directly exerted on • Effect: The resulting environmental impacts that embody certain aspect of societal concern • Integrality: Component completeness, structural rationality and functionality of the environment as a whole • Well-being: The damages caused by all the prior aspects to human welfare CFCs emission Stressor

29. Assessment Frameworks Life Cycle Assessment Ecological Risk Assessment

30. Comparative vs. Absolute 3 1 2

31. Comparative Assessment vs. Process 1 Process 2 • Performance influenced only by inherent properties of processes • Not site- and time-specific • Usually use chemical ranking or scoring system • More often used by chemical process designer

32. Absolute Assessment Exposure pathway

33. Absolute Assessment (cont.) • Rigorous analysis • Site- and time-specific • Fate and transport models • Exposure characterization: inhalation, ingestion, dermal • Effect characterization • Need:meteorological, geological, hydrogeological, population etc. data

34. MultiCriteria Decision Making (MCDM) Environmental burden Reliability Profit Price

35. General characteristics of MCDM • Criteria are mutually independent and incommensurable • Usually no “best” alternative in terms of all criteria • More or less subjective • Decision has to be made by decision-maker • Mostly studied in Operations Research & Management Science

36. DM for Sustainability • In nature a MCDM • Number of criteria may be large • Some criteria are ill-defined • Criteria’s relative significance varies with interest • Inadequate information and higher uncertainty • Multiple decision-parties often involved

37. MultiCriteria Decision Aiding • Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) • Outranking • Reference Point • Goal Programming • Compromise Programming • Utility Function • ……

38. Questions……