A5005949623- Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies
- Environmental Impact and Sustainability
- Microplastics and Plastic Pollution
- Recycling and Waste Management Techniques
- Biofuel production and bioconversion
- Microbial Metabolic Engineering and Bioproduction
- Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
- Sustainable Supply Chain Management
- biodegradable polymer synthesis and properties
- Energy and Environment Impacts
- Municipal Solid Waste Management
- Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems
- Bioeconomy and Sustainability Development
- Economic and Technological Innovation
- Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
- Process Optimization and Integration
- Sustainability and Ecological Systems Analysis
- Catalysis for Biomass Conversion
- Green IT and Sustainability
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
2020-2024
Joint BioEnergy Institute
2021-2023
Amazon (Germany)
2023
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
2019-2022
University of Pittsburgh
2015-2021
While not yet competitive with commodity polymers, PDKs are recycled to monomer at lower cost and emissions than virgin resins.
In 2019, the United States consumed over 57 million metric tons (MMT) of plastic with less than 7% recovered for reuse. This study provides an updated material flow analysis at national and regional scales all durable single-use plastics in States. From this analysis, we develop a series alternative future scenarios that envision scale-up recycling technologies, incorporating technical limitations sorting infrastructure constraints. The results suggest maximum 68% (24 MMT) waste could be...
We present a network model of interstate food trade and report comprehensive estimates embodied irrigation energy greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in virtual water for the United States (U.S.). consider 29 commodities including 14 grains livestock products between 51 states. A total 643 million tons with corresponding 322 billion m3 water, 584 MJ energy, 42 kg CO2-equivalent GHG were traded across U.S. 2012. The estimated are similar to CO2 from cement industry, highlighting importance...
Sustainability is increasingly concerned with the complex interactions between nature and society, we need to seek solutions towards challenges that threaten humanity's collective wellbeing. Towards this end, it critical advance application of research examining dynamic components social-ecological systems their emerging properties. A key area on advancing tools strategies relevant evaluation strengthening resilience. Redundancy, diversity, modularity are important characteristics resilience...
The current methodological approach for developing sustainable biofuel processes and supply chains is flawed. Life cycle principles are often retrospectively incorporated in the design phase resulting incremental environmental improvement rather than selection of fuel pathways that minimize impacts across life cycle. Further, designing requires joint consideration economic, environmental, social factors span multiple spatial temporal scales. However, traditional assessment (LCA) ignores...
We present a network model of the United States (U.S.) interstate food transfers to analyze trade dependency with respect participating regions and embodied irrigation impacts from food-energy-water (FEW) nexus perspective. To this end, we utilize systems analysis methods including pointwise mutual information (PMI) measure provide an indication interdependencies by estimating probability between states. PMI compares observed benchmark what is statistically expected given structure flow in...
The efficiency by which monomers may be recovered during the chemical recycling of plastic waste has thus far dominated discussion over future polymer chemistries might more sustainable than those in use today. However, at scale, other factors emerge as equally important, such costs primary versus secondary resin production well energy and carbon intensity circular manufacturing processes. We apply systems analysis to identify problematic processes used for plastics designed infinite...
Abstract Plastics have played a crucial role in shaping the modern era. However, they are produced almost exclusively from non-renewable feedstocks and face considerable challenges recycling, especially crosslinked polymers used consumer electronics, building materials, automotive parts, aerospace composites1–3. Here, we integrate computational materials design, polymer chemistry, synthetic biology, systems analysis into workflow to accelerate design of biorenewable polydiketoenamines...
Food trade connects distant places of food production to consumption. Through traded food, associated environmental impacts are also displaced as the consumer benefits from product without incurring externalities production. Taking U.S. rice an example, we discuss sustainability implications rewiring and for reducing irrigation (water energy) transportation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We model a series robust optimization scenarios that re-arrange origin therefore target virtual water...
In 2019, the United States consumed over 57 MMT of plastic with less than 7% recovered for reuse. U.S. waste has increased by almost 20% last decade, driven low cost virgin materials. This study provides an updated material flow analysis at a national and regional scale all durable single-use plastics in The results materials serve as inputs series scenarios scaling mature recycling technologies implementing advanced technologies, incorporating both technical limitations sorting constraints...