Electrospun nanofibrous membranes for membrane distillation application-A dynamic life cycle assessment (dLCA) approach.

Membrane distillation (MD) for water desalination and purification has been gaining prominence to address the issues relating to water security and the destruction of aquatic ecosystems globally. Recent advances in electrospun membranes for MD application have improved antifouling and anti-wetting performance. However, the environmental impacts associated with producing novel electrospun membranes still need to be clarified. It is imperative to quantify and analyze the tradeoffs between membrane performance and impacts at the early stages of research on these novel membranes. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an appropriate tool to systematically account for environmental performance, all the way from raw material extraction to the disposal of any product, process, or technology. The inherent lack of detailed datasets for emerging technologies contributes to significant uncertainties, making the adoption of traditional LCA challenging. A dynamic LCA (dLCA) is performed to guide the sustainable design and selection of emerging electrospun poly (vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) electrospun membrane (E-PH) and hybridizing polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) on E-PH membrane (E-PDMS) for dyeing wastewater treatment technologies. The associated environmental impacts are related to the high energy demands required for fabricating electrospun nanofibrous membranes. After LCA analysis, the E-PDMS membrane emerges as a promising membrane, due to the relatively low impact/benefit ratio and the high performance achieved in treating dyeing wastewater.

Bioconversion of Food Waste to produce Industrial-scale Sophorolipid Syrup and Crystals: dynamic Life Cycle Assessment (dLCA) of Emerging Biotechnologies.

Bioconversion of food waste into sophorolipid-based biosurfactants is a promising emerging technology. It is important to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with the latest advancements in sophorolipid production as it matures to maximize sustainability on scale-up. This study takes a dynamic Life Cycle Assessment (dLCA) approach to address the inherent uncertainties and evaluate the environmental performances. It demonstrates the dLCA framework by conducting the new traversal of food waste-derived industrial-scale sophorolipid production, with the combination of Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA). A systematic investigation of the environmental-economic implications of the two pathways to produce SL crystals and syrup. The global warming potential (GWP) for 1 kg of SL crystals and syrup was 7.9 kg CO2 eq. and 5.7 kg CO2 eq., respectively. The Ashby-like charts based on the LCA and TEA results at the pilot plant highlighted the trade-offs between systemic environmental costs and economic benefits for design decisions.

Guiding environmental sustainability of emerging bioconversion technology for waste-derived sophorolipid production by adopting a dynamic life cycle assessment (dLCA) approach.

Microbial biosurfactants are surface-active molecules that are naturally produced by a range of microorganisms. They have certain advantages over chemical surfactants, such as lower toxicity, higher biodegradability, anti-tumor, and anti-microbial properties. Sophorolipids (SLs) in particular are one of the most promising biosurfactants, as they hold the largest share of the biosurfactant market. Currently, researchers are developing novel approaches for SL production that utilize renewable feedstocks and advanced separation technologies. However, challenges still exist regarding consumption of materials, enzymes, and electricity, that are primarily fossil based. Researchers lack a clear understanding of the associated environmental impacts. It is imperative to quantify and optimize the environmental impacts associated with this emerging technology very early in its design phase to guide a sustainable scale-up. It is necessary to take a collaborative perspective, wherein life cycle assessment (LCA) experts work with experimentalists, to quantify environmental impacts and provide recommendations for improvements in the novel waste-derived SL production pathways. Studies that have analyzed the environmental sustainability of microbial biosurfactant production are very scarce in literature. Hence, in this work, we explore the possibility of applying LCA to evaluate the environmental sustainability of SL production. A dynamic LCA (dLCA) framework that quantifies the environmental impacts of a process in an iterative manner, is proposed and applied to evaluate SL production. The first traversal of the dLCA was associated with the selection of an optimal feedstock, and results identified food waste as a promising feedstock. The second traversal compared fermentation coupled with alternative separation techniques, and highlighted that the fed-batch fermentation of food waste integrated with the in-situ separation technique resulted in less environmental impacts. These results will guide experimentalists to further optimize those processes, and improve the environmental sustainability of SL production. Resultant datasets can be iteratively used in subsequent traversals to account for technological changes and mitigate the corresponding impacts before scaling up.

Knowledge is money: Do people think cultural capital can be transformed into economic value?

Cultural capital is defined as the accumulation of knowledge, behaviors, and skills that a person can tap into to demonstrate one's cultural competence and social status (Bourdieu, 1986). Cultural capital has been well-understood in social sciences such as sociology and economics for the past decades. Little research has examined the psychological antecedences and consequences of cultural capital at the individual level. Our current work seeks to provide empirical evidence to support the claim that cultural capital (embodied, objective, and institutionalized) can be transformed into economic value. Using a 3 × 3 × 2 (Cultural Capital Conditions × Behavioral Agents × Frames) mixed experimental design, our data showed that under the gain frame rather than the loss frame, the property of people with cultural capital was judged higher than those pretending to have cultural capital, but without real knowledge. Interestingly, this pattern of results only holds true under the embodied cultural capital condition, but did not hold true under the objectified and institutionalized cultural capital conditions.

Monitoring urban expansion and land use/land cover changes of Shanghai metropolitan area during the transitional economy (1979-2009) in China.

This study explored the spatio-temporal dynamics and evolution of land use/cover changes and urban expansion in Shanghai metropolitan area, China, during the transitional economy period (1979-2009) using multi-temporal satellite images and geographic information systems (GIS). A maximum likelihood supervised classification algorithm was employed to extract information from four landsat images, with the post-classification change detection technique and GIS-based spatial analysis methods used to detect land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes. The overall Kappa indices of land use/cover change maps ranged from 0.79 to 0.89. Results indicated that urbanization has accelerated at an unprecedented scale and rate during the study period, leading to a considerable reduction in the area of farmland and green land. Findings further revealed that water bodies and bare land increased, obviously due to large-scale coastal development after 2000. The direction of urban expansion was along a north-south axis from 1979 to 2000, but after 2000 this growth changed to spread from both the existing urban area and along transport routes in all directions. Urban expansion and subsequent LULC changes in Shanghai have largely been driven by policy reform, population growth, and economic development. Rapid urban expansion through clearing of vegetation has led to a wide range of eco-environmental degradation.