(357ap) Designing Life-Cycle Networks, Chemical Reaction Pathways & Innovation Roadmaps for a Sustainable Circular Economy

Material life cycles must be reformed for a Sustainable Circular Economy (SCE) to avoid exploitation of natural resources and waste pile-up in the environment. Particularly, plastic commodity networks are creating a menace to the environment and require immediate attention. It has become crucial to determine the most promising value-chain reforms and innovations, which can help establish a SCE. In addition, corporate ESG targets and agreements between governments require net-zero production and higher material circularity for as early as 2030. This motivates my dissertation research, which is focused towards developing a ‘roadmap for action’ to meet sustainability and circularity targets, using systems engineering modeling and methods.

During my PhD, I have developed several frameworks which are generally applicable for establishing a SCE for any product or service. In order to design value-chain reforms for SCE, I have developed a Cradle-to-Cradle Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and design toolkit [1], which finds optimal value-chain pathways for maximizing circularity, while minimizing greenhouse gas emissions and natural resource consumption. This toolkit is applied for the grocery bags value-chain of the United States of America, and the trade-off between SCE metrics is captured as 'pareto' fronts [2]. These fronts are developed using multi-objective superstructure optimization and used by stakeholders to determine a compromise solution. This study depicts a dire scenario for currently available alternatives in the value-chain and demands the inclusion of eco-innovations to aspire for win-win solutions that lead to a net-zero circular economy.

The second half of my dissertation research, therefore, focuses on eco-innovation modeling and planning. To this effect, I have built an algorithm to guide and discover eco-innovations using hotspot analysis and sensitivity-based optimization [3], along with the previously mentioned toolkit. This has been utilized to screen and rank innovations from the plastics packaging industry which can be implemented within the grocery bags value-chain. Accurately modeling some of these eco-innovations within the life-cycle superstructure network requires large scale data collection and generation. To reduce this computational effort, I have also developed a multi-scale sustainable engineering framework to model novel technologies as chemical reaction networks, which are linked to the process-scale, life cycle and the economy [4]. A multi-scale optimization formulation, then allows for the evaluation of these networks for holistic sustainability, thereby reducing the search space. Once the eco-innovations are modeled and ranked using the proposed algorithm, the next goal is to develop a roadmap to direct action at different points of time in the time horizon, defined by the Sustainability and Circularity targets.

In order to create roadmaps for SCE, I have developed a stochastic planning formulation to determine the exact timepoints for investment in eco-innovations to enhance their readiness levels towards adoption. The objective is to meet the sustainability and circularity targets for 2030, 2040 and 2050 while minimizing the investment cost for adoption. Utilization of pareto fronts within the planning problem ensures that trade-offs between SCE objectives are considered while planning. The eco-innovations are expected to evolve over time, a behavior which is proposed to follow probabilistic Markov-chains, or deterministic experience curves. In addition, as decisions are made in the future, the value of money and greenhouse gas emissions are expected to change. Integrated assessment models are used to ascertain the reduction in background emissions due to policy-enforced sustainable activities. This roadmapping framework [5] is expected to be beneficial to corporations with evolving R&D, policymakers, and funding agencies, for facilitating sustainability and circularity transitions towards a net-zero and circular future.

My PhD journey has made me realize that systems engineering and optimization, along with chemical engineering principles are powerful tools to tackle environmental issues such as climate change, resource depletion and waste pile-up. In developing novel frameworks towards SCE, I have also gained several technical skills such as multi-criteria decision making, planning and scheduling, mathematical modeling, stochastic programming, life cycle assessment, optimization, data analytics, and programming. I am excited to join the industry and apply my skillset to practical and real-world problems related to new product development, economic profitability and sustainability.

References

[1] Vyom Thakker and Bhavik R. Bakshi. "Toward sustainable circular economies: A computational framework for assessment and design." Journal of Cleaner Production 295 (2021): 126353.

[2] Vyom Thakker and Bhavik R. Bakshi. "Designing Value Chains of Plastic and Paper Carrier Bags for a Sustainable and Circular Economy." ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 9.49 (2021): 16687-16698.

[3] Vyom Thakker and Bhavik R. Bakshi. “Guiding Innovations and Value-chain Improvements Using Life-Cycle Design for Sustainable Circular Economy.” Computer Aided Chemical Engineering (2022) – under review.

[4] Vyom Thakker and Bhavik R. Bakshi. "Multi-scale sustainable engineering: Integrated design of reaction networks, life cycles, and economic sectors." Computers & Chemical Engineering 156 (2022): 107578.

[5] Vyom Thakker and Bhavik R. Bakshi. "Developing Roadmaps Toward a Net-Zero and Circular Future.” (2022) In preparation.