(59d) Process Development of Aquatic Macrophyte Based Water Treatment and Biomass Processes: Towards Biofuel Sustainability Metrics

Integrated process solutions and decision making processes provide a potential way to address sustainable topics (i.e. energy and environment based concerns). Engineering professionals of today will become ever more familiar with adopting sustainable design methodologies and will also be responsible for evaluating future design tools (e.g. LCA database integration with traditional graphic design interfaces). In an effort to provide metrics for aquatic biomass based energy processes, previous characterization work related to the remediation of oxytetracycline has been scaled to also evaluate the potential to provide for biomass (by way of aquatic macrophytes). To better assess the integration of these types of processes, reliable decision based models could be construced to provide insight for decision makers in the context of relevant societal concerns (e.g. sustainability). A previously reported example of supply chain optimization was used in line with a simple method to establish and evaluate base line metrics for the evaluation of aquatic species to both remediate oxytetracycline and produce biomass derived biofuels. Evaluation of this ?watergy? nexus combines an environmental impact evalution with initial biofuel metrics established by AIChE's Institute of Sustainability.