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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 May 2019) | Viewed by 17228

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Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Steven Van Passel

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Guest Editor

Department of Engineering Management, University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium
Interests: sustainability assessment; Techno-economic assessment; environmental valuation; cleantech; climate change economics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

There is an urgent need to develop and use environmental technologies that can contribute towards a more sustainable society. As technological, environmental and economic assessments use different perspectives, they are often done independently using separate models, with different assumptions at different technology readiness levels (TRL). To facilitate the development of technology towards all three dimensions, integration is needed, taking into account the interlinkages and possibly the correlations between the different dimensions. Sustainability assessment brings economic, social and environmental information together. The combination of different metrics combining environmental and economic aspects is an interesting approach to assess sustainability performance. Techno-economic assessment (TEA), life cycle costing (LCC), life cycle analysis (LCA) and cost-benefit analysis (CBA), including the valuation of externalities, are important methodological components towards sustainability assessments.

This Special Issue assembles critical studies assessing a wide range of environmental technologies. Environmental technologies, clean technologies (cleantech) or green technologies (greentech) monitor, model, manage, conserve, restore our natural environment and resources and/or reduce the negative impacts of human involvement. Papers for this Special Issue will develop and apply a variety of sustainability assessment methods. It is essential to at least combine and/or integrate two sustainability dimensions. A single environmental (e.g., LCA) or a single economic analysis will not be considered. An environmental impact assessment study (e.g., LCA) can for example be complemented with minimum a description and discussion of the economic and/or social aspects (and vice versa). A combination or integration of sound quantitative or qualitative environmental, economic (or social) assessments will be welcomed. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a rigorous peer-review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, new methods, developments, and applications.

Prof. Dr. Steven Van Passel
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Sustainability assessment
environmental technology
Cleantech
Greentech
techno-economic assessment
life cycle analysis, life cycle costing, cost-benefit analysis
technology readiness level
environmental valuation and sustainability
sustainability indicators, sustainability metrics, integrated assessment

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 3597 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Allocation Methodology of Process-Level Carbon Footprint Calculation in Textile and Apparel Products

by Xin Li, Lizhu Chen and Xuemei Ding

Sustainability 2019, 11(16), 4471; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11164471 - 18 Aug 2019

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 5528

Abstract

Textile and apparel industrial processes generate a huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions, which is a severe environmental issue for China. Aiming at greenhouse reduction, a carbon footprint calculation method is presented. In carbon footprint calculations, allocation methodology is among the most significant and controversial issues; it can be a major reason for the LCA uncertainty and robustness caused. What is more, allocation methodology impacts directly on the preparation of data collection and system boundary. Different outcomes can be achieved even for apparently similar systems by using a different allocation approach. Textile production has a large range of production process. During textile production process, it may be a single product production with co-products. The current CF calculation only evaluates GHGs emissions at product or plant level, so the difference of the technology on different processes cannot be deduced. Hence, the choice of proper allocation methodology is a crucial issue to be considered in textile and apparel industry. In this paper, based on characteristics of textile and apparel industry, process-level allocation methodology in textile and apparel industry was put forward. The application of allocation methodology was investigated and analyzed with a case study on cotton T-shirts. Firstly, case study results show that greenhouse gases of the ironing and sewing process are the two largest emissions (ironing, 40.82%, and sewing, 34.85%, respectively). Energy-saving refrigeration equipment needs to be chosen to reduce the greenhouse gases significantly. Secondly, for most processes, CF of S2 (auxiliary CF) accounts for the highest proportion of total CF. Preferred to S1, more attention should be paid to reduce the S2 emissions. Thirdly, GHGs emissions of the polo shirt in the sewing process are significantly higher than that of the T-shirt in the sewing stage (T-shirt, 0.167 kg CO₂ eq/piece, and polo shirt, 0.371 kg CO₂ eq/piece, respectively). This is the consequence that polo shirt’s style and structure determine the complexity of its sewing process. Finally, based on the pearson correlation coefficient, T-shirt production (kg) has a significant negative linear correlation (correlation coefficient: −0.868) with the CF (kg CO₂ eq/kg T-shirts), the similar with that (correlation coefficient: −0.963) of all production. Improving the textile and garment production efficiency is significant to reduce the CF of products (per mass) by technological innovation and management optimization. In this study, we demonstrate that the process-level allocation is a feasible method, and can serve as the basis for a textile-specific allocation approach in LCA. Process-level allocation may help to address textile allocation problems and might lead to more detailed LCA results for products. We recommend broad applications and testing of this new allocation approach. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Assessment of Environmental Technologies)

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18 pages, 3801 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Life Cycle Assessment of SEWGS Technology Applied to Integrated Steel Plants

by Letitia Petrescu, Dora-Andreea Chisalita, Calin-Cristian Cormos, Giampaolo Manzolini, Paul Cobden and H. A. J. van Dijk

Sustainability 2019, 11(7), 1825; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11071825 - 27 Mar 2019

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4531

Abstract

The environmental evaluation of the sorption-enhanced water–gas shift (SEWGS) process to be used for the decarbonization of an integrated steel mill through life cycle assessment (LCA) is the subject of the present paper. This work is carried out within the STEPWISE H2020 project (grant agreement No. 640769). LCA calculations were based on material and energy balances derived from experimental activities, modeling activities, and literature data. Wide system boundaries containing various upstream and downstream processes as well as the main integrated steel mill are drawn for the system under study. The environmental indicators of the SEWGS process are compared to another carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology applied to the iron and steel industry (e.g., gas–liquid absorption using MEA). The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions for SEWGS technology is about 40%. For the other impact indicators, there is an increase in the SEWGS technology (in the range of 7.23% to 72.77%), which is mainly due to the sorbent production and transportation processes. Nevertheless, when compared with the post-combustion capture technology, based on gas–liquid absorption, from an environmental point of view, SEWGS performs significantly better, having impact factor values closer to the no-capture integrated steel mill. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Assessment of Environmental Technologies)

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17 pages, 1804 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Development of an Indoor Environmental Quality Assessment Tool for the Rating of Offices in Real Working Conditions

by Anna Devitofrancesco, Lorenzo Belussi, Italo Meroni and Fabio Scamoni

Sustainability 2019, 11(6), 1645; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11061645 - 19 Mar 2019

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3528

Abstract

The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) refers to the quality of indoor spaces in relation to the health and well-being of users. IEQ is a holistic concept considering various components of the overall indoor comfort: thermo-hygrometric, lighting, air quality and acoustics. Each component is described through specific performance indicators and benchmarks. The quality of the built environment is assessed at different stages from design to operational phase. The scientific literature reports several case studies related to the assessment of the individual components of the IEQ Tools aimed at the evaluation of the overall IEQ. The paper proposes an assessment tool based on the SB Method (Sustainable Building Method) and the Multi Criteria Analysis for the evaluation of IEQ during the operational phase of a building. Each component of IEQ is analysed through objective indicators and calculation methods. The tool provides two main outcomes: a global score expressing the overall performance of the building from the IEQ perspective; quantitative evaluations of all indoor comfort components through monitoring and measurement of the environmental variables. The above contributes to select intervention areas to optimize indoor design and to identify technologies aimed at ensuring the best IEQ levels for users at the operational stage. The system was applied to an open-plan working space of an office building. Monitoring activities and measurements are carried out to detect the indoor and outdoor variables affecting the IEQ. All aspects of IEQ were analysed and quantified so to evaluate the overall performance of the building and provide data to improve the working conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Assessment of Environmental Technologies)

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15 pages, 4976 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Fuzzy Based Model for Standardized Sustainability Assessment of Photovoltaic Cells

by Muath Bani Salim, Dervis Emre Demirocak and Nael Barakat

Sustainability 2018, 10(12), 4787; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su10124787 - 15 Dec 2018

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3294

Abstract

In this paper, a new environmental sustainability indicator (ESI) is proposed to evaluate photovoltaic (PV) cells utilizing Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) principles. The proposed indicator is based on a model that employs a fuzzy logic algorithm to combine multiple factors, usually used in multiple LCAs, and produce results allowing a comprehensive interpretation of LCA phase sub-results leading to standardized comparisons of various PV cells. Such comparisons would be essential for policymakers and PV cell manufacturers and users, as they allow for fair assessment of the environmental sustainability of a particular type of PV with multiple factors. The output of the proposed model was tested and verified against published information on LCAs related to PV cells. A distinct feature of this fuzzy logic model is its expandability, allowing more factors to be included in the future, as desired by the users, or dictated by a new discovery. It also provides a platform that can be used to evaluate other families of products. Moreover, standardizing the comparison process helps in improving the sustainability of PV cells through targeting individual relevant factors for changes while tracking the combined final impact of these changes on the overall environmental sustainability of the PV cell. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Assessment of Environmental Technologies)

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