Life Cycle Analysis of Selected Novel Materials and Designs

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• 3 Minutes on the Future of Energy

Novel materials developed, such as biochars, chicken feathers, cellulose nanofibrils, and nano-solar particles, are ultimately going to be applied in pretreatment and wetland reclamation. Choosing and applying these materials is not just based on science, but on business and social concerns.

One technique that helps move products from the lab bench to commercialization is life cycle cost analysis. Life cycle cost analysis refers to the inventory assessment and benchmark costing of all inputs, throughputs and outputs involved in technical product or process. Using OpenLCA software and information from the laboratory experiments on novel materials and designs, life cycle cost analysis models of these materials, and a partial model of the wetland design itself are being developed. This is tricky because novel materials have fewer benchmarks, requiring more assumptions and sensitivity and stress tests. the work is beginning with better benchmarked materials, such as biochars, and moving to newer ones, such as nano solar particles.