EFRI E3P: Sustainable and Circular Engineering for the Elimination of End-of-life Plastics: A Framework for Assessment, Design, and Innovation

工程消除报废塑料（E3P）需要技术进步，以最大限度地回收利用，行为理解，以影响消费者的态度，和经济方法，以激励延长产品寿命。每一种选择都涉及社会可接受性、经济可行性、环境可持续性和循环性的权衡。例如，如果生物可降解塑料分解成生物营养物，它们似乎是最理想的。然而，如果这些材料具有较大的生命周期环境影响，它们的采用不会消除生命周期结束，而只是将环境负担沿生命周期转移。E3P的解决方案需要通过环境友好、经济可行和社会可取来实现可持续性。该项目的总体目标是为可持续和循环E3P （SCE3P）的评估、设计和创新开发整体和系统的方法和工具。研究团队将在聚合物化学、反应工程和分子模拟方面进行协同研究，以确定实际污染条件下解聚和增值过程的性质；流程设计，以模拟当前和新兴技术的成本和物理流动；供应网络建模，以确定对更广泛的化工行业的影响；辨别和影响消费者角色的行为研究；生命周期和循环评估，以评估全球价值链的环境影响。最终的框架将考虑整个塑料生命周期，包括在每个步骤中数千种替代方案的组合，以选择“最佳”途径。该框架将能够评估现有产品，设计新产品和途径，并鼓励朝着SCE3P方向创新。该框架将适用于所有类型的塑料，但该项目的实验重点将放在聚苯乙烯（PS）和聚对苯二甲酸乙酯（PET）上，因为它们的市场很大。SCE3P框架将在该项目中应用于食品服务行业的塑料产品，并与行业联盟和其他利益相关者合作进行案例研究。该项目旨在促进化学工程、可持续工程和行为科学的融合，以评估、设计和创新，实现塑料的可持续和循环经济。目标是开发关于PS和PET产品的各种解聚和增值方法的化学和工程新知识。研究团队还将汇集有关塑料生命周期各步骤的知识，为SCE3P的创新路线图做出贡献。通过将塑料工业和新兴技术纳入SCE3P，美国化学工业的空间模型将得到扩展。行为研究将增进对其他决定对塑料产品选择及其负责任处置的溢出效应的理解。将开发新的数据和方法来评估和设计循环系统，评估其弹性，并确定重点创新的热点。在食品服务领域的应用将引导朝着零浪费和碳中和的目标迈进。这个项目的成果将是一个SCE3P框架的软件原型，它将通过一个大学网站、面向行业和其他利益相关者的网络研讨会以及大学课程广泛传播。合作伙伴将提供全球100多家公司的访问权限。该团队将开发与研究相关的教学模块，通过“工程师你的世界”项目将其纳入大学课程和高中工程课程，该项目覆盖了全美10,000多名不同的高中学生。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Engineering the Elimination of End-of-life Plastics (E3P) requires technological advances to maximize recycling and recovery, behavioral understanding to influence consumer attitudes, and economic approaches to incentivize extension of product life. Each alternative involves trade-offs in its social acceptability, economic feasibility, environmental sustainability, and circularity. For example, biodegradable plastics may seem to be most desirable if they decompose to become biological nutrients. However, if these materials have a large life cycle environmental impact, their adoption will not eliminate the end-of-life, but simply shift the environmental burden along the life cycle. Solutions for E3P need to be sustainable by being environmentally benign, economically feasible, and socially desirable. The overall goal of this project is to develop holistic and systematic methods and tools for assessment, design, and innovation toward Sustainable and Circular E3P (SCE3P). The research team will conduct synergistic research in polymer chemistry, reaction engineering, and molecular simulation to determine properties of depolymerization and valorization processes under practical conditions of contamination; process design to model the cost and physical flows of current and emerging technologies; supply network modeling to determine the effects on the wider chemical industry; behavioral studies to discern and influence the role of consumers; and life cycle and circularity assessment to estimate environmental effects across global value chains. The resulting framework will consider the entire plastics life cycle, including thousands of combinations of alternatives at each step to select the "best" pathway. This framework will be able to assess existing products, design new products and pathways, and encourage innovation toward SCE3P. The framework will be useful for all types of plastics, but the project's experimental focus will be on polystyrene (PS) and poly(ethylene terepthalate) (PET) due to their large market. The SCE3P framework will be applied in the project to plastic products in the food service industry, with case studies done in collaboration with industry consortia and other stakeholders. The project is formulated to contribute to the convergence of chemical engineering, sustainable engineering, and behavioral science, for assessment, design, and innovation toward a sustainable and circular economy of plastics. A target is to develop new knowledge about the chemistry and engineering of various depolymerization and valorization approaches for PS and PET products. The research team will also bring together knowledge about steps in the plastics life cycle to contribute to an innovation roadmap for SCE3P. A spatial model of the U.S. chemical industry will be extended by including the plastics industry and emerging technologies for SCE3P. Behavioral studies will improve the understanding of spillover effects of other decisions on choice of plastic products and their responsible disposal. New data and methods will be developed for assessing and designing circular systems, evaluating their resilience, and identifying hotspots to focus innovation. Application to food services will guide progress toward goals of zero waste and carbon neutrality. The outcome of this project is to be a software prototype of the SCE3P framework, which will be disseminated widely via a university-based website, webinars to industry and other stakeholders, and university courses. Collaborators will provide access to over a hundred companies across the world. The team will develop teaching modules related to the research for inclusion in university courses and high school engineering curricula through the Engineer Your World program which reaches over 10,000 diverse high school students across the U.S.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.