Handbook of Sustainable Engineering

The term sustainable development stands for a new age in human cultural development, following the industrial and post-industrial eras. Emblematic of such development is “sustainability,” a sociocultural movement toward a new lifestyle paradigm that is based on three fundamental principles: respect for natural systems, the promise of a humane living base for all humans, and the development of a circular flow economy to support material life. Thus, Sustainability is not a new discipline or academic field of study. Rather, it is a future-oriented principle, one that involves all human actors in any field of activity at any place on our earth.

There can be little doubt that if ecodesign and sustainability principles are going to be adopted, a great accelerator would be fundamental curriculum reform in engineering degree-granting institutions across the globe. But for most individuals involved with institutions of higher education, daunting hurdles exist at all levels – departmental, college, university, as well as accreditation by certification agencies. And because of the work burdens extant in academic jobs, most individual faculty members do not have the time to jump through the procedural hoops that would result in real change. Additionally, because of the lack of widespread acceptance of the basic principles of product life cycle management, or the need to take valuable real estate from other topics, most efforts in curricular change end up bogged down. There are a rapidly increasing number of programs that offer some complement of sustainability courses at the graduate level, and some nascent efforts at the undergraduate level. However, the largest problem with single-course offerings is that they effectively pigeonhole “green” engineering into a vanishingly small part of the curriculum, where what really needs to happen is a systemic overhaul of all classes so that ecodesign and sustainability become systemic in the way that engineers operate themselves.But in order for this to happen, some type of framework must be established that allows both students and professors a larger, more coherent approach to the field. Such a model is presented in this chapter. This approach is both inclusive and extensive. After presentation of the model, this chapter offers the educational practitioner some examples of application of the model – one is a model for curriculum reform primarily at the undergraduate level, with examples for potential from the USA, Europe, and India. The other is a template for two more typical sustainability courses that would be offered at the graduate level.

Since more than 20 years, ecodesign experts in mechanical industry have been concerned with the question of how industrial products and especially machines can be improved in an ecological sense. As some products are often used in different ways by different clients, usage itself has to be hypothesized as a variable entity. Ecodesign, therefore, requires consolidated system know-how and engineering targeted toward the system and system performance. This is about more than just “filter and recycling”; much rather better products are required. Once you start looking at machines, respectively production systems, the complexity of the product increases enormously.For ecodesign in the machine industry, specific know-how is essential – know-how which is not yet or only partly available. This is why new ways have been investigated. The solution lies in a learning process in which the industries and universities collaborate, i.e., collaboration between experts and students, who gradually acquire the necessary know-how and implement it directly in R&D projects and also integrate it into university teaching in a practice-orientated way.The objective of this chapter in hand is to illustrate this learning process by means of the example of the “Swiss machine industry.” The chapter is based on many years experience from being a university professor and leading courses and projects for product managers in manufacturing companies. The innovative aspect of this learning concept is the fact that specific knowledge is collaboratively developed by experts from the industry and universities. Joint analyses, discussions, and especially approaches, which concern new planning methods as well as new technical solutions in particular, are at the center of this. So first, to make this happen, a sense of mutual trust between sometimes competing companies and universities has to be established.

It has been widely observed that Education for Sustainable Development(ESD) –or, as some prefer, Education for a Sustainable Future – presents a challenge to existing systems of instruction and curricula. The empirical, reductionist, discipline-based model which now forms the basis of university faculties has served well in the past, leading to enormous expansion of human knowledge, technology, and – with some exceptions – the global economy.However, this model may not be adequate to address the issues and challenges of global sustainability, and indeed many feel that this growth in human activity lies at the root of the problems now faced by humanity. Accordingly, for ESD to succeed in its purpose, ways must be found to bridge the gaps among multiple disciplines, and to develop students’ capacity to synthesize the viewpoints these bring to sustainability.A variety of approaches are being taken to meet this challenge. These range from wholesale restructuring of curricula and creation of new courses of study in “sustainability science” or “energy systems” to incremental changes in existing courses, along with supplementing formal curricula with research, networking, and other opportunities for intensive experiential learning. This chapter describes some of the innovative activities that have been undertaken at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT’s approach is fundamentally discipline-based and multidisciplinary, embodies the Institute’s motto of mens et manus (learning by doing), and makes use of the campus itself as a laboratory for learning. Among the examples described here is a graduate level subject on sustainable energy (recently adapted to include undergraduates), a project-based subject for beginning students that addresses topics ranging from energy saving projects on campus to global environmental issues, the infusion of energy and environmental topics into basic course requirements in science, engineering, and social science, and making use of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program to engage students in current research activity on these topics.

Engineering as a profession unquestionably contributes to the welfare of humanity, yet it is becoming more and more evident that the standard engineering curriculum, a product of the post-World War II era, is no longer optimal for the globally competitive, entrepreneurial firms of the knowledge economy. Further, as engineered systems become more widespread and increasingly coupled with cultural and natural systems, the impacts of new technologies become more unpredictable. Engineering in such a complex and rapidly changing environment requires engineers that are increasingly sophisticated with respect to the challenges of sustainability and complex adaptive systems. Thus, an educational system appropriate for the Anthropocene (the “Age of the Human”) is one that builds adaptive capacity into the curriculum itself as well as its graduates. This chapter suggests that a framework – a sustainable engineering method – might facilitate the evolution of engineering education and constitute a structure for imparting competencies to students that will prove valuable and relevant in the twenty-first century. Though it cannot address all issues surrounding engineering education and is therefore not a comprehensive solution, it is meant to serve as a reference for educators as they conscientiously design each curriculum to meet the needs of students, their future employers, and the world at large.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.

Charles Darwin

Nothing is permanent except change.

Heraclitus of Ephesus

Engineering is a powerful societal force. As engineers conceive and create the built environment, they inevitably influence social and environmental change. However, a number of groups and individuals have recently expressed concern that engineers do not sufficiently understand the context and implications of their work and that both engineering practice and engineering education have failed to adapt to the needs of a world that is growing in both population and complexity (National Academy of Engineering 2005).

In this chapter, it is not assumed that engineering and its curriculum are failing or need to be “fixed” in any way. On the contrary, modern life in developed economies provides daily reminders that engineers are competent and responsible: Aircraft take off and land safely; potable drinking water is readily available; communication networks are fast and reliable. Engineering is among the somewhat unfortunate professions that go unnoticed if done well. Attention is paid to it primarily when mistakes are made – or when the public becomes disillusioned with the products (or unintended consequences) of engineered systems.

That said, while engineering and its professional preparation may be adequate for the moment (though some dispute this), there is always room for improvement. The goals and paths to improvement are often elusive, however, and that is the topic of this chapter. Hence it will provide an overview of some of the criticisms of existing curricula followed by a discussion of calls for more sustainable engineering practice. Throughout the text, a single framework – a sustainable engineering method – will be offered as an example of one possible path toward a curriculum that meets the needs of a complex and changing world. The goal of this engineering method is to instill several competencies in students, which will be discussed below. Ultimately, the framework remains one of many possible solutions and is itself merely a preliminary concept. Moreover, the focus on incremental improvement presented in this chapter does not obviate the possibility that radical rethinking of engineering education may be necessary and desirable (Allenby 2011).

Tangible approaches to multi- and transdisciplinary teaching and learning are gaining significance as the world becomes aware of the importance of education in equipping society with the skills to address global challenges. The Youth Encounter on Sustainability (YES) has been successfully running for 10 years and provides a proven approach to solution-oriented, multi- and transdisciplinary sustainability education for university level-students. To date, 1,200 young leaders from over 110 different countries have been trained in the program and form the active YES Alumni network.This chapter presents the unique framework, approaches pedagogical methodologies and learning objectives that lie behind the YES program, and shows how they have been implemented in various contexts. Furthermore, it explores how the knowledge and skills acquired by the participants of the program equip and inspire them to take the lead in addressing global challenges.

The emerging classification of Sustainability-oriented Innovation Systems places an emphasis on the social elements of change, as well as the technological. However, sustainability-oriented problems are too vast for one person or discipline to comprehend; thus people tend to want to collaborate, meaning they form teams. As a further extension to address sustainability-oriented problems, there is an increasing emphasis on transdisciplinary research and development (R&D) efforts, whereby coproduction transgresses boundaries, and science becomes visible before it becomes certain. To reach the objectives of transdisciplinary R&D efforts will require two key concepts: the gathering of information from experts, namely, knowledge transfer; and making connections between them, namely, knowledge integration. Nevertheless, challenges have been noted in terms of academic tribes that impede teamwork, and, importantly, the lack of combined thought and action in R&D. This chapter explores the collaboration, between disciplines, that has been described as the means of meeting the requirements of transdiscplinary R&D to identify, structure, analyze, and deal with specific problems in such a way that it can: grasp the complexity of problems; take into account the diversity of life-world and scientific perceptions of problems; link abstract and case-specific knowledge; and develop knowledge and practices that promote what is perceived to be the common good. However, the latter brings into question how values and culture influence collaboration and thus transdisciplinary R&D efforts. The chapter subsequently builds on an introduced conceptual framework to understand how the values and culture of individuals in a transdisciplinary R&D team, as well as those of the organization, determine the potential success or failure of the R&D effort. A case study in the bio-energy field is used as basis. The R&D project, which spanned over 3 years in South Africa, required a transdisciplinary team of engineers and scientists of various fields to collaborate with stakeholders outside the R&D team. The case emphasizes that the lack of engineering disciplines to recognize, understand, and incorporate values and culture into R&D practices will lead to project failure; pre-empting and managing expectations of social change (often) far outweigh the necessity for technological change. A number of recommendations are thus made to improve sustainable engineering R&D practices.

A systems engineering approach must be applied to solving the sustainabilityissues dealing with the world’s water, food, and energy demands (see Fig. 8.1).The earth must be looked at as a total system, which integrates these resourcesthrough physical, biological, and social networks, which are constantly in flux. Theother key component is the economic factor, which unfortunately favors the richand punishes the poor when it comes to distribution of adequate safe water, food,and energy resources. The public health issues and toxicological effectsbecome critical when water resources are impacted by environmental and/oranthropogenic activities.

Exploring technology for the environment and society is an essential activity within the research applied in International cooperation.

This chapter provides a brief overview of basic toxicological methods and approaches which can be used by engineers in the field to make a rapid environmental risk determination. In addition, Internet sites which deal with specific contaminants, standard operating procedures, and methods for assessing deleterious effects on organisms living and depending on ecosystem resources are provided.

The project purpose was the development of a 50kW Micro Hydro plant and a 150 liter per day On Site Electro Chlorination (OSEC) System at “La Realidad”, a little village in Chiapas, a conflict geographic area in Mexico. The local people involvement was a key aspect of the project; the objectives has been reached also by applying the Matching Person and Technology Model to the technical encharged for the maintenance of the turbine. Survey On Technology User analysis was used to support decision on the choices of technology used.

Groundwater contamination creates huge problems in many areas over the world. This chapter will use the arsenic contamination problem as a typical but the largest among such problems and discuss the importance of role of the health science or human biology for implementing sustainable, and especially small-scale, mitigation measures. Although the chapter will concentrate on arsenic, the chapter should have significant implications in considering not only other chemicals but also nonchemical (e.g., microbiological) contaminations.Based on the authors’ experiences in Bangladesh as well as on recent literature, the chapter will discuss the importance of dose-response relationship, a conventional component for risk assessment, focusing on (1) important modifying factors particularly associated with developing countries, where such problems are often encountered, and on (2) exposure evaluation. The chapter will discuss these two rather conventional issues under a new light and will try to show how the information from health science/human biological science can be utilized to devise adaptive approach in implementing engineering options.Discussion of modifying factors including biological attributes (e.g., gender or genetics) and cultural/behavioral factors (as nutrition) will show that such modifying factors could pose substantial impacts on the dose-response relationship and will suggest such factors should be considered as an intrinsic part of the dose-response relationship rather than assuming a “universal” dose-response and its modifiers.Discussion of exposure evaluation will include significance of non-water exposures and chemical speciation. The former will emphasize the exposure through food and may potentially lead to substantial revision of the mitigation measures, while the latter may show the practical importance of rapidly evolving scientific (toxicological/biological) knowledge in considering actual countermeasures. This portion, particularly the chemical speciation part, will be rather arsenic specific (as compared to the first discussion on the modifying factors) but still relevant to contamination by other chemicals.As a whole, this chapter will try to demonstrate the importance of comprehensive biological/health science knowledge in implementing specific sustainable engineering measures.

Sustainable earth system engineering (SESE) is defined as deliberate, careful, and science-based management of the three major components of the life support system of the Earth: climate, biodiversity, and stability of societies and economies. Unintended interventions into these basic assets have led to major global crises. It appears that mankind is confronted with four major, widely interrelated problem areas. Keywords in this context are water and food deficiency, societal and economic instability, loss of the self-regulation capacity of ecosystems, and last but not least the crisis caused by global warming and the resulting climate change. Growth of the human population in conjunction with global changes of life style is the underlying reasons for the evolvement of such crises. A holistic approach is to be taken to counteract the mankind’s impacts into the generic life supporting system of the Earth. This chapter describes the interrelationships to be considered when planning to direct the development of the Earth system toward a steady-state which enables the multibillion size humanity to maintain its niche.

In southern Iraq, the water shortage is an old problem and the Second GulfWar (2003) made the situation worse. The main problems affecting waterprovision are the salinity of the water and the lack of maintenance of thepreexisting water treatment plants (WTP) and compact units (CU).The most common water treatment used consists in lowering the turbidity and sterilizing the water to avoid the presence of bacteria using pressurized sand filters and chlorinating units. However, the main problem of this system is the lack of adequate supply of chemicals and sand.During the postwar period (May–December 2003), the Italian NGO “Un Ponte Per…” (UPP) and the “Interuniversity Centre for Research on Sustainable Development” (CIRPS) developed a strategy to rehabilitate eight among WTPs and CUs in the Basrah governorate, in southern Iraq, where the main source of water for domestic use is the surface water from the channels connected to the Shatt Al Arab or the Shatt Al Basrah.In a second phase of the project, in 2009, CIRPS and “Gaia Ricerche” gave to ICRC, the International Red Cross Committee, an On Site Electro Chlorination (OSEC) System to be installed in the area.

Presumably, sustainable water management is the correct answer to the changing precipitation patterns resulting from global warming and to the rapid increase of the global water demand caused by population growth and lifestyle changes on the global as well as on the regional level. To minimize volume and rate of abstraction from aquifers and man-made reservoirs, elementary improvements are recommended concerning water usage, water transportation, and pricing. Innovative water-efficient agricultural practices are to be developed and introduced. Concerning urban water management priority is to be given to maintenance, cascading use of water and water reuse. In water-deficient areas, wastewater has to be considered as a potential source of water. City planners, architects, investors, and representatives of water authorities are called to join forces. It needs to be understood that methods tailored to the specific climatic, hydrological, economic, and cultural situation at the spot are superior over traditional methods described in major textbooks. Sustainable solutions can be expected to materialize when up-to-date knowledge and wisdom meet.

Sustainable production and products are prerequisite for the realization of a sustainable society. The term “sustainable” connotes keeping up with the present state for a long time. In order to be sustainable, resources must be available and current environmental quality should be preserved. From this, one can extract key concept about sustainability. They are: sustainable resource supply and stable environmental quality.

In ISO TR 14062 “Integrating environmental aspects into product design and development,” company strategies and product strategies are clearly described but design strategies are barely mentioned. There are many “design for X (DfX)” approaches, the rules from experience, life cycle thinking, and other potential design for environment (DFE) solutions. Many of these propagate to make DfE complicated. Besides environmental impact considerations, structural elements like modularity should be taken into account which has no effect on the environmental impact. Product structure is important for disassembly and in the end for the product lifetime.A systematic product design approach is introduced in this chapter. Highlights of the design strategies include:A product should be simplified in structure and complexity. Three design strategies are distinguishable: design for functional units, design for a fewer number of materials (target: one plastic, one metal), and a design with standard components from the market combined with disassembly analysis to simplify the product structure. Starting from a reference product, not only environmental impact but also disassembly time which offers information about the structural quality of the product are taken into account. In reality, many manufacturers have no real choice which way to go because they purchase most of the components and do not engage in product design and development much by their own. Often, there is also a mixture between these strategies but an optimized solution could exist for each manufacturer situation.It should be mentioned that the result of application of the rules from experience is part of the ecoprofile of a product. If possible, the rules of design for recycling (DfR) are to be integrated in product design process.Checking environmental impact caused by product software should be a new step in Ecodesign. Impact can be caused by the software program itself, by commands initiating something in a product like battery loading or the possibility to better control functions of a part such as motors.The whole manufacturing process should become a target for redesign. It is not enough to substitute only one hazardous substance. Company and product strategy can now be formulated in-line with the design strategy. Therefore, environmental aspect like recyclability is not a blank formulation in these strategies but can be backed by details from the design strategy.

The twentieth century saw remarkable progress in scientific technology that our way of life was drastically transformed; the products humans made and the processes used to manufacture them had a considerable effect on the natural environment. Being aware of this, manufacturers are now trying to develop and commercialize manufacturing processes that produce as little environmental impact as possible (“cleaner production”). In addition, manufacturers are conducting life-cycle assessments (i.e., assessments of the product’s whole lifespan from cradle to grave) that specify processes that are considered to have the least environmental impact and maximum “eco-efficiency.” However, these techniques cannot be properly evaluated unless attempts are made to understand what is presently unknown with the use of social science, corporate ethics, and science and technology. Even when these concepts are established, there is still a long way to go before theory can be put into practice. Since 1994, the Study on the Introduction and Promotion of Design for Environment (DfE) techniques has studied the evaluation criteria for environmentallyconscious products in Japan. After studying this aspect until the end of the twentieth century, the study continued to develop and examine techniques for DfE. In the twenty-first century, as a final step to developing activities associated with DfE, the development of a technique called QFDE (Quality Function Deployment for Environment) was completed.This chapter presents a methodology to apply Quality Function Deployment (QFD) for environmentally conscious design in the early stage of product development. This methodology has been developed by incorporating environmental aspects into QFD to handle the environmental and traditional product quality requirements simultaneously. “QFD for Environment (QFDE)” proposed consists of four phases. Designers can find out which parts are the most important parts to enhance environmental consciousness of their products by executing QFDE Phase I and Phase II. Further, a methodology to evaluate the effects of design improvement on environmental quality requirements was developed as Phase III and Phase IV. The results obtained from the case study of IC package show that QFDE could be applicable in the early stage of assembled product design, because the most important component from the viewpoint of the environment is clearly identified and multiple options for design improvement are effectively evaluated.

More and more green legislations were adopted in the global community. These legislations have notably affected the electronic industry supply chain. Printed circuit board (PCB) as a critical part in electronic products or systems receives some of most severe impacts.The legalization of RoHS leads to lead-free solder material development in the past 10 years. However, the lead-free alloys require higher reflow temperatures, which translate to higher energy costs as well as environmental loading in terms of carbon footprints. The high solder reflow temperature also forces changes in PCB base material and may require new equipment to fabricate them.The legalization of WEEE requires electronic waste to be recycled. PCB is used to be one of the most difficult parts to be recycled. WEEE also stipulates separation of components containing brominated flame retardants from other electronic waste prior to disposal or recycling. PCB fabrication companies have to stop using brominated flame retardants within the PCB base materials and prepregs and to develop substitutes. Further, to facilitate recycling, some toxic substances have to be avoided in PCB processes, for example, cyanide in gold plating and formaldehyde in electroless copper plating. These all demand changes and result challenges in PCB manufacturing.Global shortage of fuel and energy sources call for environmental friendly production processes, with less energy used and more precious metal recovered within the production cycle. Subsequently, alternative processes are to be developed to promote greenness in PCB fabrication.

The opportuneness of reinforcing strategies for the quantitative reduction and reuse of packaging, which in general terms is the most efficient for environmental protection, requires an intervention which begins at the phases of conception and design of the packaging, and necessitates the reasoned and effective management of an ever broader spectrum of design requisites.Hence it is necessary to operate following integrated design processes which take into consideration all the stages of the entire life cycle of the packaging, from manufacture to disposal, balancing a wide range of factors and including all the environmental aspects, beyond the direct competencies of the various actors involved in this life cycle (packaging manufacturer, packer, logistics manager, consumer, designated disposer). In this way the most effective environmental strategies with which it is possible to intervene (quantitative reduction, reuse, recovery) can be directly linked to design choices, and thus translated into true and proper design strategies. Such strategies, operating on the variables associated with the physical dimensions of the package (system architecture, materials, shape and significant geometric parameters of components), allow the pursuit of the desired environmental requisites to be incorporated into design practice.An effective management of the requisites for the eco-sustainable design of packaging becomes therefore a key factor for a successful development of design solution, and must allow to make choices which implicitly take into account the various factors in play and the potential conflicts between them.This chapter proposes a methodological statement which involves:Integrating conventional requisites (associated with the primary functions of protection, containment, handling, and transport) with environmental requisites, in the development of tools and metrics guiding the designer in choices on design variablesExtending the concept of environmental impact of packaging (which is most commonly limited to the quantity of waste generated and the effects resulting from the use of polluting or toxic substances)Analyzing the consequences that design choices have on the environmental impact of the packaging over its entire life cycle, as well as its economic sustainability and functional efficiencyHaving developed these premises, this chapter proposes two different, but complementary, approaches for an integrated design which interpret the exigencies noted above. The first one consists in an integrated approach to the optimal choice of materials, allowing the management of the main design parameters (materials, significant geometric parameters), taking into account the various typologies of requisites: functional (weight-bulk efficiency of the package), economic, environmental (quantitative reduction, containment of some factors of impact).This first approach, which has some intrinsic limitations, can be complemented by a second more complete approach. Integrating the techniques of Life Cycle Assessment in the packaging design, this second approach consists in the design of packaging life cycle, as it allows to take into account, in an organic manner, the diverse environmental implications deriving from design choices, with regards to all the processes constituting the package life cycle.Finally, examples of their application are presented, illustrating the use and highlighting the potential of the tools proposed.

Manufacturers and other businesses are being placed under increasing pressure to achieve higher productivity with reduced environmental impacts. Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA), one of the major tools of environmental management accounting, is considered to be an effective approach to meet such needs. Being recognized as key approach for sustainability, MFCA was internationally standardized to be ISO 14051 in September 2011.MFCA promotes increased transparency of material use practices through the development of a material flow model that traces and quantifies the flows and stocks of materials within an organization in physical and monetary units. This data can be used to seek opportunities to reduce material use and/or material losses, improve efficient uses of material and energy, and reduce adverse environmental impacts and associated costs. This chapter explains detailed steps for MFCA implementation and shows actual case examples. Furthermore, MFCA’s impact is not limited to a single entity. MFCA can be applied to the supply chain where material wastage at one organization is occasionally sourced from suppliers. Impact on supply chain is also described in this chapter.

Ecodesign, an integration of environmental aspects into product design, requires identification of significant parameters of a product in its entire life cycle. Significant parameters are processes, materials, parts, activities, and life cycle stages that contribute significantly (e.g., > 1%) to the total impact of a product. Product life cycle assessment (PLCA) is a tool that enables quantification of the input and output from the processes and activities of a product, assessment of their potential impact on the environment, and then identification of significant parameters.PLCA has two major applications: the identification of significant parameters and the development of the environmental profile of a product. Significant parameters can be used for clarifying the environmental needs for Ecodesign, while environmental profile for assessing the Ecodesign results or eco-product and environmental communication of the eco-product. Product carbon footprint (PCF) is one of the most visible applications of the product’s environmental profile by communicating to the market only the data related to greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions.Practical guidance and relevant examples related to the topics such as product modeling, data collection and processing, data compiling, calculation of the life cycle impact, identifying significant parameters, and development of an environmental and carbon profile are given in this chapter to aid understanding of the PLCA and PCF.

Remanufacturing, a process of bringing used products to “like-new” functional state with matching warranty, is being regarded as a more sustainable mode of manufacturing because it can be profitable and less harmful to the environment than conventional manufacturing. The practice is particularly applicable to complex electromechanical and mechanical products which have cores that, when recovered, will have value added to them which is high relative to their market value and to their original cost. Because remanufacturing recovers a substantial fraction of the materials and value added to a product in its first manufacture, and because it can do this at low additional cost, the resulting products can be obtained at reduced price. Remanufacturing however is poorly understood because of its relative novelty in research terms. This chapter will clearly define the term “remanufacturing” by differentiating it from alternative green production initiatives. It provides an overview of the remanufacturing concept, significance, and practice.

Apart from benefits for environmental protection, reuse of components and products offers attractive economic advantages, provided that components are “qualified as good as new,” which (in this chapter abbreviated as “quagan”) entails a new concept first introduced in the international standard IEC 62 309. This standard has been initiated by the authors of this chapter, who have worked out the quagan concept to overcome prejudices against and to promote reuse of components and products.Nowadays electronic components in most products have a considerably longer life expectancy than required. Thus, a quagan component, deployed in a second life in a new product, can have a higher reliability degree than the new ones because of a simple fact: Early failures have been already eliminated by its “previous life.” Taking this into account, it is evident that quagan concept supports the interest of manufacturers, customers, and society at the same time. Manufacturers can make a profit by taking back used products and making them “quagan” (a process we call “quaganized”), using the same test procedures as they have for the new ones and, at the same time, fulfill legislative requirements concerning environmental protection.Consumers get updated products for a lower price with the warranty granted for new products.Government achieves higher recycling rates.To convince quagan consumers of getting a technically up-to-date product, the quality procedures, including the ones to fulfill the safety requirements, and their documentation must be visible. The purpose of this chapter is to provide guidelines in accomplishing this.As a first step, quality requirements for “qualification as new” are discussed. This is not trivial because of the necessity to extend the common perception of “new products” to those products containing “as good as new” components. It is likely that this will also lead to changes in the state of the art of legal understanding of the notion “new” because it usually implies using only new components in new products. However, the fact might help here that some products, for example those in the electrical and electronic (E&E) industries, have long contained not-new components that have been already artificially pre-aged due to accelerated testing to avoid early failures.As a next step, this contribution explains how a manufacturer has to plan for several product generations in advance because, the products sold – if required by law or voluntarily – will return to the plant at some point after the end of their lifespan. Many processes have to be installed and planned in advance; for example, a tight connection to customers, value analysis of attractive, high-value components, their cleaning, restoration, and qualification. Last but not least, these processes have to be documented to inform all parties involved.This chapter explains also how “design for recycling” can work and what should not be reused. Recommended for recycling are the simple and easily testable, modular components. Up to 25% of a product can be reused, but often only a single component makes up the core of recycling because of its monetary value. However, the value chain should also include spare parts that can be extracted, and materials to be selected for high-quality recycling.Finally, the state of the software of more complex product systems and their upgrading process is also important. Therefore, refurbishment rules that necessitate hardware and software upgrading should best avoid environmentally contra-productive instructions, for example, the unnecessary charging of batteries or energy consuming load/store instructions in programs. A corresponding standard to the IEC 62309 for software reuse is in the planning.To sum up, the reader of this chapter will learn that a good concept such as refurbishment is not enough to achieve sustainability. Sustainability includes the trust of all participants in the process and assistance with potential legal problems, thus bringing advantages to all participants.

Supply chain management for sustainability, or providing a sustainable supply chain, has become increasingly important with the growing awareness on global warming and energy security. This chapter discusses management issues such as sustainable supply chains, sustainable enterprises, and sustainable manufacturing.Viewing the subject from the perspective of manufacturing enterprises, the conventional studies related to this area can be classified into two categories: environmental issues and risk management. A supply chain that addresses environmental issues is often called a green supply chain, and it incorporates energy efficiency and reverse supply chain reducing waste and health problem caused by hazardous substances. These issues are widespread and important for a sustainable society in terms of global warming, energy security, and pollution. A key approach is systems thinking – visualizing problems, defining boundaries, setting goals, and simulating policies to predict their effects. A methodology to tackle these issues should involve all stakeholders in the supply chain, i.e., consumers and governments, as well as the product lifecycle, which includes mining, refining, power generation, processing, assembly, logistics, sales, maintenance, and recycling. Even if one sector reduces the environmental load, the activities might significantly increase the environmental load in other sectors. Other management aspects are the time, where policy and technological developments work in the reverse direction from specific goals within a time frame, and space, which is increasingly global.Risk management for disruptive events in supply chains requires a methodology of monitoring and resilience to mitigate disruptions such as natural disasters and financial crises. Globalization forces globally distributed enterprises to act more quickly when a disruptive event occurs. A systematic approach, such as visualizing risks and defining metrics, is still important for preventing and mitigating risks. Management must understand that disruptive events create not only hindrances, but also opportunities to win business from competitors.Japan is well known for its energy-efficient and environmentally sound technology. This chapter also presents the history of Japan, which witnessed events from people suffering from health problems due to pollution of water, soil, and air, to the development of energy-efficient technology to deal with oil crises twice in the 1970s. The introduction explains why the enterprises and people of Japan are well aware of environmental issues.A few examples from the automotive industry illustrate the specific challenges of managing supply chains. The examples include the substitution of materials in cars in terms of lifecycle assessment and a predicted shortage of copper for clean energy vehicles. The smart grid system is an example of a large system that requires system and lifecycle approaches.Finally, other challenges are discussed for future research. There are three levels for analyzing environmental issues: macro, mezzo, and micro approaches. The mezzo level approach is the most appropriate for supply chains and is expected to be studied by more researchers. A socio-technical approach that includes both policy and technology roadmaps appears to be a promising approach.

As sustainable design is rather a new discipline, the necessity of creativity implementation was conceived from the beginning. But few attempts to foster creativity in design practice were successful, and it was in the realm of random process, namely, serendipity. One of big steps toward systematic innovation was possible by introduction of Russia-born TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). The efforts toward somewhat paradoxical systematic innovation are now blossoming as CAI (Computer-Aided Innovation) including TRIZ. Those developments also influenced greatly many of the modern technologies that enable the increasing number of the patents with significant improvement in their quality. Intimate relations of the innovations by these tools with sustainable design are also observed. In this chapter, the attempt has been made to summarize and analyze the accomplishments of applying CAI on sustainable design. At first, the history and current state of TRIZ, CAI, SI (Systematic Innovation), and biomimetics are described. Secondly, literature review on the cross area of sustainable design and CAI is presented. Earlier practice of combining CAI and conventional design practices, such as Design for X and present theoretical concepts as well as methodology, have been discussed to understand the knowledge enhancement in this regard. In addition to finding wisdom from man-made world, the bio-inspired design approach (encompassing biomimetics) is another direction to find good ideas from the nature. The systematic approach of TRIZ has proven useful to develop innovative ideas that have been inspired from the nature. Finally, two successful examples are presented to illustrate how it can be applied to produce sustainable engineering outputs from daily life to energy-intensive industry. It is hoped that this chapter can shed light on how to make the world more productive in innovation toward sustainable design.

Environmental consciousness has been growing in recent years, and product life cycle design that aims to maximize utility value while minimizing environmental load and cost should be implemented in addition to the environmentally conscious design of the product itself. In this context, many life cycle design tools have been proposed in recent years. Examples include life cycle scenario description tools, which support a designer in explicitly describing an expected life cycle scenario for a product, life cycle simulation (LCS) tools, and design guideline for product life cycle. However, it is not easy for a designer to derive a practical design solution for the product life cycle (e.g., product specifications and life cycle options for components) by using these tools. Life cycle scenario description tools alone cannot calculate the optimal values for design parameters and LCS tools, the model of which consists of a large number of interrelated parameters, and are too complex to calculate these values. In addition, developing a calculation model for a LCS tool is a time-consuming task.To solve these problems, Total Performance Design (TPD) method has been developed, especially focusing on the balance of customer’s utility value of a product and its resulting environmental load and cost throughout the entire life cycle. In this method, Total Performance Indicator (TPI), which represents the environmental and economic performance throughout product life cycle, is used as an objective function and a design solution is derived as a set of life cycle option (e.g., reuse, recycling, upgrading, extension of physical lifetime) for each component, specification for each functional requirement, and product lifetime that maximizes TPI under given business environment.Although this method was revealed to be useful through a case study, it was shown that the consideration of various eco-business strategies (e.g., product sales, lease and rental, and function selling) also plays an important role in improving TPI. For example, adequate control and management of operating conditions are effective for products which consume large quantities of energy and materials during their use stage. In this case, providing products with energy-saving service (e.g., ESCO business) is a promising approach. In addition to operating conditions, product lifetime and its physical wear and deterioration are also insufficiently controlled by product design alone. Therefore, the idea generation and decision-making process for eco-business strategy, as well as design of a target product itself, should be focused on.The objective of this chapter is to propose the TPI-based idea generation method for the development of eco-products considering the most suitable eco-business. Specifically, this chapter provides a designer with a set of eco-business rules and case base extracted from Japanese eco-business cases. The applicability of each rule is described in relation with 17 business parameters that represent the situation (pattern) of the given business environment. Referring to the rules and the cases of which patterns are similar to the given business environment, the designer can easily generate adequate eco-business ideas. The designer can also determine the product performance specifications that are suitable for the generated eco-business ideas through the analysis of these parameters.

Sustainable product development comprises several aspects. Beside environmental, material, and production issues, market success and design processes have to be taken into account. Methods for sustainable engineering have to address all these aspects simultaneously. Structural complexity management as a method allows for the modeling of different system aspects and their relations. Thus, it is particularly suited for sustainable engineering by providing a means of relating various concurrent perspectives onto a system. This chapter introduces the basic concepts and discusses their application. The use case illustrating the application deals with the development of a high-pressure pump.Every system, for example, a technical product composed of parts, or a project consisting of process steps, people, and documents, is characterized by dependencies among the system’s parts. In practice, this collection of dependencies makes systems difficult to handle and extremely complex.Dependencies of a system form structures, such as a sequential chain of dependencies, a loop, or a hierarchical tree. Such system structures show characteristic behaviors in practical applications. System elements, interlocked by dependencies in the structure of a loop, for example, may demonstrate self-energizing or self-impeding behavior. Thus, if system structures are identified, it is possible to predict system behavior.A key characteristic of structural complexity management is the consideration of multiple aspects of dependencies. Geometric and functional dependencies between technical components, for example, can be processed jointly in order to describe the system’s behavior. This possibility is addressed as the “multiple-domain” approach and contrasts common “Design for X” perspectives in product design, where the X stands for a large variety of optimization targets that do not necessarily coexist simultaneously. However, focusing only on one specific objective, for example, cost or assembly, cannot provide comprehensive and sustainable system improvements. One-sided optimization of a system bears the risk of spreading single adaptations to a multitude of system elements. As system dependencies link different aspects of system behavior, they can, in fact, help to achieve the objectives of improved design by considering their combined occurrence.When considering system structures, only the existence of dependencies has to be known and not their quantified specification. This allows applying structural complexity management in the early phases of product design, where detailed system specifications are often not available. Yet, decisions in early phases possess far-reaching consequences which can be beneficial or detrimental.The approach to structural complexity management as shown here is able to deal with qualitative models and thus differs substantially from simulation approaches for complexity management. Simulation also applies system dependencies but tries to result in exact predictions of system behavior. However, the underlying computations in simulation approaches require detailed quantification of elements and dependencies.A use case illustrates the application of these concepts. It deals with the development of high-pressure pumps. The aim was to optimize existing product structures of various current pump concepts. The use case shows how multiple product views, for example, geometry, function, and production, were modeled. The different views were combined to derive proposals for modules and carry-over parts.

The term “Sustainable manufacturing” has gained increased attention in recent years. In establishing sustainability in the manufacturing industries, ecodesign of products is important. It is also important to focus on developing and implementing actual manufacturing technologies. Requirements for practical manufacturing technologies include satisfying high quality, low cost, and low environmental impact simultaneously. Environmental issues are very important; however, quality is the key feature in deciding whether the developed manufacturing technologies will be used in the industries. It is not easy to satisfy the three aspects, since there are trade-offs among the three aspects. However, breakthroughs in material technologies and fabrication technologies can be the key factors in making manufacturing technologies industrially feasible. In the first part of this chapter, several new material technologies and fabrication technologies are discussed in order to satisfy high quality, low cost, and low environmental impact simultaneously.A method called “total performance analysis (TPA)” enabled product developer to quantify the value, life cycle cost, and life cycle environmental impact of a product, or its eco-efficiency. Since the TPA method can take three aspects of a product into account, it is envisaged suitable method for the evaluation of the eco-efficiency of the manufacturing technologies. Thus, to some extent, the TPA method can be applied to evaluate manufacturing technologies in the minimal manufacturing area. Although developing actual manufacturing technologies is the most important part of the minimal manufacturing, recognizing that individual technologies are really “minimal” and industrially feasible is also important. The TPA method was also applied to find an improvement target in the manufacturing processes.In the second half of this chapter, the TPA method was applied to an innovative manufacturing process making ceramic products. In the example, an improved method of making ceramic heat radiation plate made by silicon nitride is analyzed and discussed. In the new process, by applying improved manufacturing technology called “reactive sintering,” the energy consumption and the cost of the total process were greatly reduced. The reduction of the energy consumption is the main contribution in enhancing the eco-efficiency in this case. Another example deals with the improvement in eco-efficiency which mainly depends on enhancement of product functionality. Throughout the case studies, the “total performance analysis” is proven effective in identifying the bottlenecks of manufacturing processes and visualizing the effect of process improvements.

Sustainable product service system (PSS) and sustainable consumption are indispensable concepts for achieving sustainability. They would be trumps for changing the current manufacturing paradigm to sustainable one. This chapter gives an overview of sustainable PSS and sustainable consumption as an introduction of related chapters.

Service is nowadays regarded as a way to achieve the “sustainability” of businesses in manufacturing companies. The Service Engineering Forum (SEFORUM) was established in 2002 as an industry-academic cooperative consortium to advance service engineering research (see http://www.service-eng.org/). In the third period of the SEFORUM (2008–2011), engineering methods to support a service design process were proposed and applied to plural actual services. This work reports these SEFORUM activities. In this work, methods to support the service design process, which is composed of the three phases, requirement analysis, service conceptual design, and service detailed design, are proposed. In addition, the results of the case studies of these methods are also reported. An overview of the methods for each phase follows.For the requirement analysis, in which designers define the target customer categories and extract the requirements, a method for negotiating various customer demands is introduced. This method enables designers to analyze various customer requirements and to effectively prioritize them. For prioritization, this method relies on group decision-making, in which a plan is proposed to minimize overall dissatisfaction (group decision-making stress) of all group members on the basis of an original evaluation of the decision-makers and their priority. In the case study, this method is applied to an elevator renewal service for a condominium building in which its residents correspond to customers. The purpose of this case study is to analyze and prioritize resident requirements.For the service conceptual design, in which designers develop function structures that meet customer requirements, this work introduces a web-based database that enables designers to acquire knowledge on the web. In the case study, this tool is applied to an elevator renewal service. The purpose of this case study is to develop way-out functions of the elevator renewal service by the designer who takes responsibilities for the development of elevator renewal services.For the detailed design, in which designers determine stakeholders involved in a designed service and allocate resources for which each stakeholder takes responsibility, an optimal resource allocation method is introduced. In this method, the limited resources of the service providers are optimally allocated to each improvement plan for the purpose of maximizing customer satisfaction. Based on the results of the allocations, the improvement plan can be quantitatively prioritized. In the case study, the method is applied to an actual service, a facility construction, and maintenance service for an electronic substation, in which a utility company is a service customer. The purpose of this case study is to obtain the information about which improvement plans should be preferentially addressed in the service improvement.

Sustainable development cannot be reached by incremental improvements; it requires a trajectory change. This implies the need to redesign not only consumer products and production infrastructures but also our daily behavioral routines and consumption patterns.Design for sustainability (DfS) goes beyond the established approach of Design for the environment (DfE) by integrating issues of social context and human quality of life into the design brief, in addition to environmental and – of course – functional and economic aspects. Such a redesign of consumption patterns need not imply a diminished quality of life, if the efficiency potentials beyond production are systematically exploited: provision, use, and satisfaction efficiency safeguard well-being while changing the consumption trajectories.As guidance in this process, it is useful to distinguish human needs, almost an anthropogenic constant, from the culture dependent satisfiers chosen to meet those needs: a sustainable choice is one which is socially as well as environmentally benign while equally satisfying needs.These considerations have been used to develop SCALES, an integrative set of design principles. It embodies existing design criteria, a wide range of previously published criteria from the design for the environment, and design for sustainability literature. Applying such integrative sets of design criteria is a creativity-provoking strategy which will help designers meet the challenge of working at the interface between sustainable production and consumption.

This chapter gives a review of research on PSS (product/service system) and its relation to environmental sustainability. The focus of this chapter is on engineering, especially design, of PSS. It first explains why PSS gains attention from the sustainability and business viewpoints and then moves on to what PSS is. One definition of PSS is “a marketable set of products and services capable of jointly fulfilling a user’s needs.” Importantly, from the engineering viewpoint, service is beginning to be increasingly incorporated into the design space, an area which has been traditionally dominated by physical products in manufacturing industries.In relation to environmental sustainability, PSS is argued to have potential for decreasing environmental impacts in many cases. Among others, the “functional result” type is regarded as the most promising. However, PSS is not always environmentally superior to its reference offering based on product sales.From the viewpoint of design, introduced are three dimensions of PSS design: the offering, the provider, and the customer/user dimensions. In principle, any PSS design is supposed to address at least part of all the three dimensions since service includes the activities of customers and providers. Then, this chapter will guide readers to the works on modeling, designing, and evaluating PSS with emphasis on the differences to traditional product design. In sum, PSS design is design toward value of stakeholders by utilizing various alternatives – either product or service. This means that PSS design provides designers with new degrees of freedom and covers an earlier phase of design that is not addressed in design of pure physical product. The latter further implies the importance of information to be available in design about product usage or service delivery. For modeling and design, some examples of methods for supporting PSS design are introduced.In the end, the author’s recognition of important industrial challenges and research issues about PSS are described based on the experiences of the author’s group. They are from various areas such as business model development, marketing and sales, R&D and PSS development, (re)manufacturing, service delivery, supply chain management, organizational and managerial topic, and energy and material consumption.

From the point of view of sustainability as well as an economic perspective, business planning, monitoring, evaluation, and communication with customers and a wide variety of other stakeholders are becoming more and more important. In this context, a growing number of methods and tools for sustainable product and business design are proposed. Examples include design for environment (DfE), product service system (PSS), industrial product service system (IPSS), servicizing, function selling, service engineering, life cycle assessment (LCA), and life cycle simulation (LCS) methods.However, it is often difficult to determine business activities that actually contribute to or harm the sustainability of the earth due to complexity of the cause-effect chains observed in business activities among stakeholders. Rebound effects typically show such indirect causality; for instance, the development of fuel-efficient vehicles may contribute to the reduction of energy consumption from a systemic perspective. However, the development sometimes increases energy consumption, because users of these vehicles may be less aware of the environmental loads of driving activities and drive more in consequence. Furthermore, governmental subsidies that stimulate the market introduction of these vehicles may result in the purchasing power of the potential owners in a long term.In such a case, it is crucial to configure the business economically and environmentally feasible in a long term by introducing new activities (e.g., introduction of a user incentive scheme regarding the reduction of energy consumption) accompanied with energy-efficient technologies. Consideration of such direct and indirect influences of the development of energy-efficient technology on business activities in multiple time scales, and vice versa, is indispensable for idea generation of eco-business.Although LCS and LCA can analyze both direct and indirect influences of business activities in a long term if they are appropriately represented in the numerical models, they are not sufficient for idea generation of eco-business. To support the idea generation of eco-business, study on modeling methods dealing with indirect causalities in a systematic and comprehensive manner is inevitable. Collection of a variety of cause-effect patterns observed in the existing eco-business cases and utilization of these patterns at the idea generation process is a basis of such study.The objective of this chapter is to propose an idea generation method for eco-business planning that handles complex relations among business activities among stakeholders from multiple time scales. Firstly, cause-effect patterns in a successful eco-business models and cases, including IPSS and function selling, are identified and formulated into cause-effect pattern library focusing on the gaps between the condition of each successful case and those of conventional businesses. Causal-loop diagram (CLD), which is a kind of system dynamics tool, is utilized to describe the gaps. Then, using information contained in the library, an idea generation procedure of eco-business is illustrated with a simplified “EcoFleet” business. Finally, future development needs of the proposed method are also discussed.This chapter is prepared for all business planners and product designers who wish to make their product and service more environmentally friendly. Any specific knowledge in engineering design are not necessary to read through this chapter.

Design of sustainable product service system (PSS) is a means for the manufacturing industry to develop business models for sustainable production and consumption through collaborations among the stakeholders involved in them. Life cycle simulation (LCS) is a crucial tool to evaluate the monetary flows among the stakeholders and material and product flows during the life cycles of products. This chapter presents LCS used for the design and analysis of sustainable PSS. This chapter presents the usefulness of LCS for the design and analysis of business models in the manufacturing industry regarding the profit of both manufacturers and product users. This chapter first explains PSS design process and computational support employed in the process. As a part of computational support, the chapter explains LCS focusing on the simulation mechanism, theoretical background, and applications. Finally, the chapter applies LCS to the evaluation and comparison of seven business models of a manufacturer of machine tools for mold component production. The business models include service-oriented business model, functional sales, and shared services, which are discussed in related PSS study as well as the traditional sales-based business model.

In recent years, manufacturers have dealt with various requirements of customers and serious environmental problems. As an effective approach to deal with those problems, the concept of product-service systems has attracted attention. The authors have been conducting research on Service Engineering for effective and efficient service design and development in an engineering manner. In this chapter, the authors explain the service-centered design approach and concrete design methods for product-service systems in Service Engineering. In addition, the authors introduce a computer-aided design system of services based on these design methods.

In society today, there is increased awareness about escalating environmental problems, for example, climate change and pollution. The main reasons for these problems are tied to society’s use of products. During the last two decades, industry and academia have proposed and tried to implement a large number of potential strategies and solutions to reduce these problems. One such promising concept that has emerged is the Integrated Product/Service Offering (IPSO) (also known as Product/Service System (PSS)). This concept is based on research from several areas such as business economics, engineering design, and environmental technology. An IPSO is “an offering that consists of a combination of products and services that, based on a life cycle perspective, have been integrated to fit targeted customer needs.” The focus is on providing a function, not a product or service; this means that the provider can put more focus on optimizing the total life cycle cost (both from the provider and customer perspectives). In many cases, the service provider retains responsibility for the physical products in the IPSO during the use phase.The objective of this chapter is to introduce product design considerations to consider when developing an IPSO. The chapter begins by providing insight on why IPSOs require a new design mindset, followed by the presentation of useful guidelines for developing IPSOs. These guidelines are illustrated with three industry examples.This chapter is based on studies by the authors but also draws from studies found in the literature. While the focus is on business-to-business IPSOs, several of the proposed guidelines could also be valid for business-to-customer IPSOs.

Increasing consumption of consumer products and services with significant environmental and social impacts is a key contributor to many of today’s sustainability challenges e.g., climate change, resource depletion (energy, water, biomass, metals, land use, and biodiversity loss), waste, pollution and social inequities. Consumer products are among those with the most significant environmental and social footprint. In particular, production and consumption of high-impact products and services, e.g., food, our homes, how we heat/cool them, the electronics we use, transport, clothing and tourism are recognized contributing factors to our most critical environmental and social challenges. Sustainable consumption and production (SCP) provides one set of solutions to tackling this. Supply side sustainable production measures to improve the sustainability performance of products across supply chains can only bring us so far. The role of the consumer in shifting consumption patterns so we can live ethically within our “one planet” means as well as the wider infrastructure to support this is also a key part of the solution. For this reason, influencing a shift to sustainable lifestyles is a growing focus for policy makers and other stakeholders with strong influence on consumer choice, e.g., retailers, brand manufacturers, educators and the media. Outside of this, the debate is growing on the inherent conflict between a traditional market economics system that continues to drive growth as resource limits become more obvious. This is forcing a more sophisticated approach to the new business and consumer models we are likely to need beyond SCP to meet our sustainability challenges as our population expands to an anticipated nine billion by 2050. In order to enable SCP demand and supply side measures to work, a paradigm shift in our economic system is needed. Key changes include internalizing environmental externality costs of production and consumption to send accurate market signals, remove perverse fiscal incentives, and actually motivate sustainable behavior change financially. In addition, our measures and indicators of success at country and business levels need to go beyond economic indicators, e.g., gross domestic product (GDP) alone, to incorporate not only financial but natural and social capital, as well as ensuring the required prioritization of these in practice. A re-evaluation of human needs and wants is part of this paradigm shift with new definitions for how consumers and producers measure “value” reflected in new business and consumer models.

Sustainability has become a “hype” topic these days (Steeger 2004). However, although sustainable considerations are clearly on the agenda of many researchers as well as managers, the corporate sustainability map is still characterized by some considerable “blind spots” (Waldron et al. 2008). One of these blind spots is the role design plays in developing sustainable products, and how the efficiency and sustainability of new product development (NPD) is increased by consequently and strategically integrating the design function into the innovation process. Starting from this fundamental perception, the intention of this chapter is to outline a theoretical and practical framework for a new understanding of sustainable product design, which should not be driven by purely ethical or technical considerations only but needs to be grounded on business strategy and economic objectives likewise.

The automotive industry is confronted with an increasing servitization and rising mobility needs. Changing customer requirements and a changing awareness of the environmental impact of transportation generate a demand for new approaches for the realization of transportation. At the same time, the rapid development in information technology sets up new possibilities to create telematic solutions and to strike new paths in the development of mobility concepts. Sustainable product service systems in automotive industry can make a major contribution to foster resource and energy efficiency in transportation. With the combination of products, services, and infrastructure, the customer requirements on mobility can be satisfied and simultaneously the environmental impacts can be reduced. Thereby, the development of new product service systems in automotive industry needs to consider automotive-specific characteristics, the mobility of the automotive, and the exceedingly strong influence of external factors on the main function of the automobile.Entire mobility concepts as future additional offers of (automotive) companies build on the basic idea of selling the mobility function instead of the product. They allow the usage and combination of different mobility enablers to combine with an integrative service and are part of the classification of result-oriented product service systems. To ensure a contribution of product service systems toward sustainability in automotive, a solution in the conflicting area between the customer’s requirements and available technologies is needed. This also influences the ownership structure of automotive transportation.The high-service complexity generated by the servitization of transportation needs to be controlled. Therefore, future developments in the market of entire mobility systems depend on the development of telematic systems. With the diverse influences on automotive product service systems, like changing customer requirements to higher importance of sustainability, the technology push, or the handling of the immaterial service parts, the exposure and the management of sustainable product service systems in automotive industry across all life cycle phases become a serious challenge. Therefore, the framework for product service system life cycle management enables to consider the product service system life cycle phases, the management perspective, and the life cycle disciplines. Regarding this aspects, the prospective developments in passenger transportation can reach an increasing rate of servitization without losing the advantages of individualization.

Technology is the methodological control over the forces of nature (cf. Habermass 1968). As this is a basic presupposition of technology, Habermass regards technology to be an “ideology” and not something that is prescribed by the laws of nature. Such a position is quite contrary to the established beliefs of engineers regarding their own work: being neutral and objective and just providing society with the efficient tools it needs. However, the tools are not neutral themselves, as our new technologies do not just fulfill existing demands, but also create new ones. Engineers have to be critical how, when, and for what aim new designs are created.

This chapter explores the relevance of scenarios and backcasting for sustainable technology development and sustainable innovation. It argues that backcasting, due to its normative nature and its focus on desirable futures, is very well equipped to be applied to sustainability, which is a strongly normative concept too. The chapter contains a brief overview of backcasting studies and a methodological framework is presented. The framework is illustrated by a backcasting case on meat alternatives and novel protein foods, which was conducted at the sustainable technology development (STD) program in the Netherlands. A backcasting methodology is presented that can be easily applied by engineers, which is also used in engineering education at Delft University of Technology.

There is a great theoretical potential to save resources by managing our demand for energy. However, demand-side management (DSM) programs targeting behavioral patterns of energy consumption face several challenges. One of the most important ones is the challenge of sustaining the changed behavior. People may respond to intensive incentives and encouragement in the short term, but if their social and physical context does not change, they will easily revert to their old behaviors once the interventions end. It is also important to realize that different types of behaviors depend on different mechanisms: one-shot behaviors like the purchasing of an energy-efficient appliance are different from routine behaviors like turning off lights. It is in the latter that achieving lasting change presents an enormous challenge.

This chapter introduces a socio-technical approach to energy DSM. Rather than focusing merely on individuals and their motivation to change, a socio-technical approach acknowledges that individual behaviors are nested within broader societal change processes. People learn much of their behavior from other people and from their immediate physical environment. Change interventions need to be accompanied by changes in culturally shared norms and values and supported by adequate technologies, policies, regulations, and infrastructures. Successful DSM programs require a good understanding of how energy consumption is shaped by everyday life routines and cultural conventions. They also require a good understanding of the target group and their concerns. This kind of understanding helps program managers to change the context or make the change fit the context, make energy consumption visible, to time their interventions appropriately, and to involve the relevant stakeholders in their program.

Several instruments are commonly used in DSM programs. These include financial instruments, information and education, metering and feedback, energy audits and advice, and voluntary programs and commitments. A socio-technical approach suggests that there is no “one-size-fits-all” instrument, but that the best combination of instruments needs to be tailored for each target group, targeted behavior change and context. This chapter offers advice and examples on how to tailor instruments to their context, as well as highlights from an online toolkit to help program managers in this task. In conclusion, an example is offered on how to shift electricity demand from one period to another. The key message is that interventions should be tailored to the specific contexts in which they are employed, building on a good understanding of how energy use is embedded in the users’ everyday life and its social and physical surroundings.

Inspired by the book From Clients to Citizens: Communities Changing the Course of their Own Development which shows the importance of rethinking people from clients to citizens in the effectiveness of community development projects, the central argument of this chapter is that the successes or failures of sustainable development (SD) engineering projects depend greatly on how engineers view and engage the people they work with. During the brief history of engineering involvement in SD, engineers have worked with people, viewing them mainly as clients and less so as stakeholders, users, or citizens. Each of these views of people by engineers prescribes the way engineers listen to and work collaboratively with people to turn SD projects into real sustainability.After briefly conceptualizing listening as the most important element of dialogue and showing how SD might be more sustainable when grounded on specific localities, this chapter maps the different categories – clients, stakeholders, users, and citizens – that engineers have used, or could use, to view the people they try to serve, and how each of these categories shapes the way in which engineers listen and work with them. While listening to and working with people labeled “clients” or “stakeholders” might be more empowering for the status of engineers as experts, it might be less effective in turning SD projects into long-term sustainability. On the other hand, listening to and working with people as “users” or “citizens” might be less empowering for engineers but more effective for sustainability.

New technologies change the world irreversibly. These changes do not necessarily need to be only positive. Herbicides and insecticides raised agricultural yields but turned out to accumulate in food chains and therefore threatened wildlife. Chlorofluorocarbons made refrigerators much safer but turned out to deplete the ozone layer that protects life from solar UV radiation. These technologies created catastrophic side effects.A different category of effects is much harder to assess: the effects that are not directly caused by a new technology itself, but by the changes in human behavior that it provokes. Cars did not just replace horses and carriages, but created a new freedom of movement. One of the effects of this new freedom was commuting. Another was the transfer of downtown shopping areas to outskirt shopping malls. These impacts dramatically changed cities and the nearby countryside. Generally, these indirect effects are hardly foreseen.It is important to assess and discuss the impacts of a new technology in an early stage of its development: Then, the technologies might still be adapted. Technology Assessment aims at assessing the impacts of new technologies. However, impacts of new technology can hardly be assessed in a neutral and factual way: Assessing all effects is generally impossible but choosing a focus of impact is a political choice. Moreover, by which standards should effects be evaluated? Sometimes, new technologies create new issues for which society has no widely accepted ethical standards. Therefore, not only impacts should be assessed but also new normative standards should be developed. The involvement of stakeholders in this process is crucial. Genetic modification introduced the issue of manipulation of life; nuclear reactors introduced the issue of global scale accidents and the Internet confronted society with loss of privacy and cyber-crime. Reaching consensus on these issues takes debate, as without debate, nobody will consider the issue and no consensus will ever emerge. The question is how to make these debates effective, that is, not unnecessarily hampering the required sustainable innovations and not ending in large-scale controversy. Such debates need input and careful design (not manipulation).This chapter will elaborate on these arguments, and deal with tools that can be helpful in assessing impacts of new technology.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become one of the most widely applied scientific and industrial methods for estimating environmental impacts of products and services. While the necessity to adopt a life cycle perspective as such was rather quickly accepted, the practical application of LCA has met considerable doubt and lagged behind. Strong contributing factors for this slow adaptation have been (i) a poor understanding of the LCA idea as such, (ii) a lack of useful tools for routine application of LCA, (iii) a lack of useful data and databases, (iv) poorly developed practices and processes for monitoring and data acquisition in industry and society in general, and (v) a general resistance to introduce a new concept. Now that these barriers gradually are being overcome, there is a need for some second and critical thoughts around the usefulness and practical applicability of LCA as a standard routine procedure in society. While doubtlessly having contributed to a revolution in systems thinking, the practical current application of LCA has several shortcomings: (i) There is a poor link between estimated emissions and (ia) the geographical location of them and (ib) the occurrence in time of them, (ii) an LCA rarely discusses the total emissions from a production site or service system since emissions are reported and discussed in relation to the functional unit, (iii) the methodology for LCA demands both categorization of material and energy flows into a large number of impact categories while in practice only a few are selected and sometimes in a rather arbitrary way, based more on the availability of data than based on relevance, (iv) the necessity to pull the assessment through the impact stage requires considerable extra skills and work by the assessing industry or agent, (v) when gradually more complex systems are being assessed, the system boundaries become more difficult to identify and the assessor faces the challenge to assess life cycles in different dimensions. The chapter describes the gradual development of life cycle thinking, LCA, and other life cycle thinking tools. It argues for a more differentiated application of life cycle thinking in practical tools in order to increase the practical usefulness of this important approach.

This chapter provides an overview of various ways by which companies can earn money with sustainable practices.When a company turns to a more sustainable way of working, up-front investments and cost often increase and products and markets change. Therefore, it requires a shift to new business models. If the business model of the company does not change, the company cannot expect to receive the rewards of value creation, and the continuation of the activities might be threatened. The challenge is to contribute to all three sustainability goals of the business model: environmental goals, economic goals, and social goals. To do so is a challenge, and not many companies manage to strike the right balance.Section 2.3 provides examples of innovative business models that aim at contributing to at least two out of these three goals. It also covers business models that combine all three strategic goals. Business models are thus given to: Achieve economic and environmental goalsAchieve economic and social goalsAchieve economic, social and environmental goalsThe category where social and environmental goals only are achieved can only exist if funded by charity, public interest organizations, or government subsidies.From a sustainable engineering perspective, business models that aim for economic and environmental goals are the most interesting. Engineering can especially contribute to a reduction of the environmental burden of companies.Business models are grouped into four categories, which correlate to the four types of strategies a company can choose to implement sustainable practices: Eco-efficiency strategyBeyond compliance leadership strategyEco-branding strategyEnvironmental cost leadership strategyThese are the existing sustainable business models. Sustainable value innovations are totally new strategies and business models, in which economic and environmental goals are combined, that do not fit into any of the previous strategies. New companies are often in a better position to go for a completely new business model. Not being limited by existing protocols, they have the opportunity to be really creative and think of new sustainable ways of making money.Section 2.4 illustrates, using stock market performance data, that new sustainable business models do not necessarily lead to better economic performance. However, economic performance does not get any worse either. This makes sustainable business models a serious alternative for companies.Section 2.5 gives an insight on the role of governments in supporting new business models for sustainable development. National governments have economic, communicative, and legal policy instruments and can use these either positively or negatively for specific business activities.Section 2.6 focuses on public-private partnership as a successful policy tool to support sustainable business models in large, mostly infrastructural, projects.

Engineering is about designing efficient products, processes, and systems. But if it is not so clear which products, processes, or systems will provide the most sustainable solutions to the current challenges, engineering efficiency is a dangerous thing as the wrong things might be designed efficiently, which might make things worse at the end! The question is what to design to contribute to SD.Raising this issue might easily lead to a long treatise of definitions of SD. But clearly SD is an issue that depends on place and time: Contagious diseases, suppression, and starvation were for long the most pressing sustainability issues. Now resource depletion, climate change, and inequity appear to be much more important articulations of sustainability.To work as an engineer on the whole concept of SD is too encompassing. More specific articulations of SD, like “energy efficiency,” “zero waste,” and “accessible for all” could be guiding principles for engineering design. However, one should be aware not to identify one single SD articulation as the essence of sustainability. Various articulations of SD always play a role, and dilemmas between these SD articulations might occur.A fundamental question is whether an engineer, by consciously altering a design to make it contribute more to SD, can change the main stream of technology in a sustainable direction. Many attempts to change the main stream of engineering design failed. Can anybody actually influence the course of technology, or are engineers forced to move along in the mainstream of techno-scientific progress? For long, this has been a heavily debated issue in the history and philosophy of technology.There are various mechanisms that limit designers from successfully introducing radically new designs. However, under some specific conditions, radically new technological options might be rapidly introduced. Can these transitions be stimulated and managed: Can large-scale and radical socio-technical systems changes be guided in desired directions? Or do these historic transitions just happen more or less coincidentally?Development of new technologies is no longer an individual endeavor. The time of the great inventors is over. An innovation takes not just research and design, but also well educated staff, entrepreneurial facilities, adjacent technologies, market development, and political support. The technological innovation systems approach systematically analyzes what it takes to produce innovations and be regionally successful with it. Currently, various regions of the world aim at becoming the high-tech area that produces the solutions for climate change and the energy crisis. Which regions will be the winners that are able to produce the sustainable technologies of the future?

Why do so many projects in which technology transfer is involved, fail? This chapter analyzes this problem and offers an alternative for well-intended but unreflected ways of dealing with technology transfer. The authors offer a comprehensive approach, taking into account the needs of the receiving society and the sociocultural context in which the technology should be embedded. Many examples, positive and negative, are mentioned from which such a methodology should learn and which in turn illuminate the methodology.The challenge consists in finding the right fit between technology and social needs, technology and social environment, and in addition to get the right management capacities and systems in place. This results in a comprehensive model of technology transfer. Its application requires cooperation between engineers and sociocultural researchers and takes the involvement of a diversity of stakeholders.Topics that are addressed include:1.Which products and technologies suit the needs of the local society?2.Which redesign do technologies need to suit a specific local context? How could institutions of higher education coordinate their efforts in order to find/invent/design technological products that suit local contexts?3.What are the real needs and sociocultural requirements of the local context? People’s participation and sociocultural research supported by NGOs and other stakeholders should provide the answer. Deep interviews, questionnaires, pilot projects, etc., may be part of this type of research.4.Feasibility study: what does it take to run a technology – and is this a feasible option or can a business case be made out of it?5.What skills are required for the production of contextualized technologies?6.Capacities and cultural characteristics: along with business skills, what will be the characteristics of the business culture and how can they be trained?7.What intercultural learning or training processes need to be in place to make the technology transfer successful? How can a viable equilibrium be created between traditional values and a modern business culture, or within a project?8.How can diffusion of this technology along with skills, capacities, learning processes, be realized?The chapter analyzes the historic origin of various value systems and describes tools to analyze these differences. The value systems and ways of life that have emerged in history can be considered as a collection of repertoires of dealing with each other and with technology. Four types of such repertoires are distinguished in relation to the perspectives of time (past and future) and space (inside and outside). Different cultures cultivated a different set of such values. In the era of globalization these repertoires become a common stock for all members of world society. This approach opens the field for a deliberate trade-off and choice depending on time and situation between so-called traditional and so-called modern values. Sometimes training will be necessary in those human qualities, which may help at some time to speed up the functioning of the business or at another time slow down the rhythm in order to gain time for mutual understanding during a meeting. Sometimes collectivism and solidarity may be necessary, and at other times individual judgment and choice, etc. Successful technology transfer may depend on the right mix and equilibrium of such human qualities and values.

Going beyond the limitation of the present is the essential feature for an energy source to be defined as “energy source of the future.”

This chapter gives an overview of biomass resources for the production of bioenergy with emphasis on the production of electricity from renewable sugarcane crop. The benefits of bioenergy production are given after which the techniques and technologies for the conversion of alternative biomass feedstock into energy products are outlined. A case study of commercial-scale electricity generation from sugarcane biomass is then given together with the associated design aspects, efficiency, performance indicators, benchmarks, and economic and environmental aspects. The opportunities for replication of such experience worldwide are finally discussed in particular in the context of sustainable energy development.

This chapter provides an overview of the current tendencies, potentials, and technologies to recover energy from water resources, which can be divided into two main fields: conventional hydropower and ocean energy. A strong focus is placed on “conventional hydropower” and especially on small hydropower (SHP), through the description of a case study dealing with a raw wastewater network. Indeed, marine energy is still in its development phase, even if tidal currents technology continues making great steps forward.The chapter begins with the main equations for hydropower and ocean energy. Then, the historical evolution of water energy recovery is summarized, followed by worldwide potentials. Environmental issues, especially for SHP, are analyzed, before a discussion of the best available mature technologies. All the components of a SHP plant are presented.With the case study, more details are given on how a SHP project can be led so as to optimally recover the water energy, even coming from wastewater.The economic tendencies for SHP are given, based on a recent Swiss analysis of the market.Finally, the greater objective of the chapter is to demonstrate the sustainability of water energy and its technologies.

Access to energy that is sustainable, secure, and affordable is a critical catalyst for economic growth and development. Nevertheless, today 2.7 billion people, mainly in poor countries, still rely only on inefficient and pollutant forms of energy for their basic needs. The development of modern forms of bioenergy for heat, electricity, and liquid fuel for transportation offers an option to address energy poverty and the interrelated issue of lack of development opportunity and environmental degradation. However, this option entails risks and opportunities for African countries that at the beginning of the twenty-first century contain some of the poorest and most technically backward regions in the world and where 80% of population still depend on charcoal and firewood to fulfill their energy needs.The sustainability of bioenergy largely depends on how the risks associated with its development are managed and opportunities enhanced. It depends also on the crop grown, the land used, the technology employed, and how the bioenergy supply chain is integrated into agricultural, social, and economic system.A number of approaches and mechanisms aiming to driving sustainability of biofuels in developing countries have been put forward, including market-based certification, national policy formulation, national legislation, good practice guidelines, impact assessments, sustainability planning, and land use planning. They present weaknesses and strengths. Drawing from Competence Platform on Energy Crop and Agroforestry Systems for Arid and Semi-arid Ecosystems in Africa (COMPETE) experience, this chapter examines and elaborates on two of them: (1) the strategic land use mapping aimed to identify available and suitable land for conversion and intensification not detrimental to environment and social aspects and (2) the good practice guidelines, based on a framework for sustainability appraisal, aimed to provide guidance to various stakeholders that wish to start, assess, or review bioenergy initiatives and projects.The presented approaches provide useful tools to ensure sustainability in practice of bioenergy initiatives. Current achievement, benefits, and shortcoming are examined, and possible way forward considered.

This chapter presents general information about the recent methods applied for geothermal systems. Geothermal engineering can be separated into two groups: research about the underground geothermal reservoir using geophysical and numerical methods and the use of a geothermal power plant as a technology to produce electricity from the underground hot waters. In this chapter, both aspects are presented.Twenty-four countries are currently generating electricity from geothermal resources and 78 countries are using geothermal energy for heating purposes. The total installed geothermal capacity worldwide is 10.7 GWe.This chapter is divided into four parts:The first part, the introduction, discusses the current use of geothermal electricity and the trend of installed geothermal capacity in the world. It also explains the main concepts of geothermal engineering and presents the different types of hydrothermal systems.The second part describes geothermal engineering technology and its components. This part presents direct utilization, geothermal heat pumps, electric power generation and combined heat and power generation, the numerical modeling of geothermal systems, the current state of practice, recent advances, and emerging trends in geothermal reservoir simulation and hybrid-microgravity monitoring applications at geothermal field.The third part presents a case study of Húsavík Energy in Iceland.In the fourth part, the economic analysis is presented.

By understanding and using the concepts of an “open cycle” and a “closed cycle” of resources, the sustainability of an energy system can be assessed. Key to setting up sustainable energy systems is the use of renewable energy resources with the integration of energy vectors in the flow chain. Three important energy vectors – hydrogen, electricity, and heat-exchanging materials – can be integrated in an energy system through sustainable energy engineering, resulting in a zero-emission conversion technology in the final use. The dual condition of “zero consumption, zero emission” is necessary for sustainability. From this perspective, the difference between consumption and emissions of an electric/electrified vehicle versus a gasoline vehicle of the same segment, along with an economic analysis, is shown in a case study.

The solar energy that reaches the earth exceeds by far humankind’s needs and other energy sources at ground level, such as geothermic or tidal energy, nuclear power, and fossil fuels. Solar energy is a renewable and sustainable form of energy. Solar irradiance includes infrared radiation and thus provides adequate energy to operate solar thermal technologies requiring reduced solar energy. Thus, many regions of the world have enough solar irradiance to utilize solar heating and cooling technologies. Most of the developing and some of the developed countries lie within the tropical belt of the world where the solar radiation is higher. Technologies requiring higher irradiation are suitable for these regions, providing significant utilization potential for both solar heating/cooling applications and solar electricity through concentrating solar power and photovoltaics. A significant part of these regions are also semi-arid or desert, allowing the implementation of large-scale facilities, and thus potential utilization is highly increased, since these areas are commonly vast, with small inclinations and high temperatures and almost no seasonal changes in solar irradiation. These areas have the potential to cover a significant part of their needs in heating, cooling, and electricity. For electricity, production may be great enough to allow significant exports also. This chapter presents the basic technologies for harvesting solar energy and exploiting this almost unlimited potential for energy utilization. The market available technologies are presented, explaining the basic operational characteristics providing the main and most common applications. Basic economics, cumulative installed power, and market values are also presented. The benefits of utilization are presented along with the physical and technical barriers to market expansion. The chapter provides a review of the current condition of commercially available solar energy harvesting technologies.

Wind farms have seen their extreme growth and development since the signing of the Kyoto protocol. In 5 years (2007–2011) the capacities have more than tripled. In 2011, about 75 countries worldwide had commercial wind power installations, and 22 countries in the world already have more than 1,000 MW of installed capacities. Europe has also seen an increase of offshore markets. This is mainly related to the UK, Denmark, and Belgium. When the shares of production technologies for electricity production are analyzed, the proportion of the use of wind energy in the world is 2.2%. With the development of technology, technical characteristics of wind turbines and wind parks have significantly improved. Special attention is nowadays paid to those elements of wind turbines that showed certain shortcomings during the previous period, i.e., transmission mechanisms, generators, blades, etc. The availability of the present wind turbines is 98%, and the level of utilization is constantly increased, as well as the economic life with the modern machines that are nowadays projected for 25-year time period. There is currently an intensive work underway on new construction designs.Wind turbine economics are changing rapidly, because of the new turbine producers, expansion of wind energy, initiatives for RES, etc. Nevertheless, it can be concluded that the price of electricity generated from wind farms becomes more and more comparable with the price of electrical energy produced from “conventional” fossil fuels. However, the only cases where they are completely comparable are the very large wind parks that are located at places with excellent wind characteristics.Central critical points of some wind turbine project are turbine purchase contract, financing, liquidity, wind turbine repair, and annual variations of wind climate. Also, other factors affect the economics of wind farm, including depreciation, income taxes, and initiatives.Wind turbines have some negative as well as positive impacts on the environment. Benefits of wind energy are different and very important. Experience in the implementation of wind projects in the EU shows that social acceptance is very important for the successful development of wind energy. Three key dimensions of social acceptance have been identified: community acceptance, market acceptance, and sociopolitical acceptance. The chapter presents the state of the art, design, wind turbine parts, efficiency, emissions, and economic analysis on these issues.

The increased awareness about global effects on the environment calls for technological innovations in the materials science field. Considering that the development of science and technology has centered on materials and energy, it is necessary to develop human-friendly and environment-conscious materials with excellent properties and functional performance. In this sense, two global risks are of priority: weather risk and resource risk. The former risk is attributed to changes in Earth’s climate, which in turn are due to the continuing rise in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases by fossil fuel burning. Several ecomaterials and ecoprocesses have been introduced with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to a significant extent. The latter risk is due to the limited number of natural resources of rare-earth elements and commodity substances. Hence, materials design is being prioritized in the development of alternative materials. These global problems are driven by two essential factors: population increase and the increasing demand for energy in the developed and developing countries.

The development of modern technology toward energy production and storage is essential to support human life with wide impact on the environment, human health, and world’s economy. Through the development of the advanced energy systems, human life can be ensure in a networked society even more conveniently. In the electric and energy field, secondary batteries will play a critical factor in reducing the environmental hazard and enable the effective construction of the green energy society. At present, high power density and high energy density are required as a power sources for the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) and electric vehicle (EV). As we know, Li-ion battery has high energy density but low power density. The energy density of Li-ion battery decreases with the increase in rate capability, but electric double-layer capacitor has high power density but low energy density. So, this chapter focuses on the advanced energy devices such as lithium-ion battery and high energy capacitors beginning with brief introduction.The importance of the solution process mainly including the hydrothermal and solvothermal method as sustainable chemistry toward the processing of the positive electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries has been discussed. The requirement and different techniques of the carbon coating using different carbon sources to improve the electrochemical property of the positive electrode materials have been focused. The electrochemical property of the olivine-structured cathode materials affected by different particles size and morphology has been addressed. The concept of using graphene-based compounds for the electric double-layer capacitor applications and electrochemical capacitor based on pseudocapacitance has been discussed. The hybrid capacitors such as metal oxide-doped graphene and PANI/graphene nanocomposites with their electrochemical performances have also been discussed.

Present status and future prospect in the fuel cell field were introduced in this chapter. To explain the important future prospect in the materials science of fuel cells, the authors focused on the materials science in the solid oxide fuel cell field after briefly summarizing present status of research and development in the fuel cell field. Also the authors reintroduced the research results to highlight the important role of the ultimate analysis of microstructure, simulation for a reasonable conclusion of microanalysis, and the processing route design based on microanalysis. The usefulness of the combined approach of microanalysis, simulation, and the processing route design is presented.

In this chapter, recent technologies in developing alternative materials utilizing nanotechnology are described. Here, an “alternative material” refers to the materials composed of abundant and ubiquitous elements with which replace conventional ones containing minor elements. The methods of the development of the alternative materials are focused on utilizing computational materials science, advanced nanotechnology for the fabrication, and nano-characterization technique. Further, some actual cases of recent developments will be discussed. Developments of such materials are not a dream now. In this chapter, what the alternative materials are and how humankind can develop them will be described.

Highly functional biomass-based plastics (bioplastics) based on renewable plant resources, advanced polylactic acid (PLA) composites, have been developed for use in durable products such as electronic instruments. The PLA composites exhibit high practicability including good heat resistance, strength, and flame retardancy while fully preserving high biomass-based component ratio and chemical safety. They also possess desirable new properties such as good shape memory and thermal diffusivity for use in upcoming instruments. Moreover, a self-assembling siloxane nano-sized particle (nanoparticle) was developed to increase the tenacity of the PLA composites. Adding natural kenaf fiber increased heat resistance and elastic modulus of PLA, and using a PLA-polyester copolymer improved the impact strength of the PLA composite. High flame retardancy and other important characteristics including strength and moldability were successfully achieved by adding heat-absorbing aluminum hydroxide and a phenol novolac-type charring agent in PLA. Combinations of the shape memory and recyclability (thermoplasticity) were performed by cross-linking PLA using a thermoreversible bond for the use in wearable devices, which are deformable and recyclable. Also, a high thermal diffusivity comparable to that of stainless steel was achieved by including carbon fibers cross-linked by natural amide compound as a binding agent in PLA to improve heat release issues caused by small and thin electronic devices. Furthermore, self-assembling siloxane nanoparticles with three phases (high-density siloxane phase, elastomeric silicone phase, and caprolactone oligomer phase) increase the tenacity of PLA to advance the application of the PLA composites for thin-sized equipments.

With tremendous progress in computer technologies and applications during the last decade, atomistic-level simulation is rapidly becoming an essential tool in materials science for the study of the physical and chemical properties of various materials. Moreover, in parallel with the experimental efforts, computer-aided materials design is also an important factor in the fabrication of novel materials, to be applied in driving engineering innovations and urgent technological needs for achieving a sustainable society. Here, an original approach has been demonstrated that allows us to construct a p − T phase diagrams of various hydrates with complex gas compositions. In order to evaluate the parameters of weak interactions, a time-dependent density-functional formalism and local density (TDLDA) technique entirely in real space have been implemented for the calculations of frequency-dependent polarizabilities and van der Waals dispersion coefficients for atoms within the all-electron mixed-basis approach (TOMBO code) developed at the Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University. The combination of both methods enables one to calculate thermodynamic properties of clathrate hydrates without resorting to any empirical parameter fittings. Using the proposed method, it is possible to not only confirm the existing experimental data but also predict the unknown region of thermodynamic stability of clathrate hydrates, and also propose the gas storage ability as well as the gas composition for which high-stability region of clathrate hydrates can be achieved. The proposed method is quite general and can be applied to the various nonstoichiometric inclusion compounds with weak guest-host interactions. From this point of view, the present methodology can support experimental explorations of the novel storage materials.

Organisms are attractive models for the development of advanced materials because they have high-efficiency, high-performance, and low-energy functions. The expression of these functions produces characteristics many times those of the original material through a characteristic microstructure, self-repair/self-destructive functions (fail-safe functions), self-cleaning functions (efficient retention of functionality), mechanisms that produce form with a low environmental burden (substance creation at ordinary temperatures and pressures, self-organization), and reversible adhesion. The understanding of biological manufacturing is now at a stage where it is expected to start substantially influencing the development of technologies that exert a low environmental load. In this chapter, the materials research and technological developments regarding attachment/detachment learned from organisms are introduced.

Analysis and minimization of resource consumption is an essential aspect of sustainability. Engineers in this field need to be equipped with concepts and methodologies for assessment and sustainable design of products and processes. Thermodynamics offers these concepts and methodologies. In the current debate on material flows, the throughput of matter and energy is the primary focus. Consumption, however, starts when material and energy is transformed and loses its potential to be useful in further products or processes. On the physical level, this loss of potential utility is well described by entropy production or exergy destruction, two related concepts from thermodynamics. Using these concepts, methodologies for analyzing resource consumption were constructed and have been successfully applied to a large number of processes, products, and services. Here, a very brief introduction to thermodynamics is given to enable the interested reader to understand the underlying concepts and help in the application of thermodynamics to analyze resource consumption. Established measures for resource consumption can be grouped into those approaches which are based on the first law of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy and matter) and those approaches which are based on the second law of thermodynamics (entropy production and the devaluation of energy and matter). A brief summary of the currently used approaches is given and how they relate to the thermodynamic interpretation of resource consumption. Exergy and entropy analysis are introduced as analytical tools and also briefly explained, with recommendations for further self-study to get more familiar with the methodologies. An example, copper making from sulfidic ore concentrates is presented as a case study for the application of entropy analysis, and the results are compared to results from other (exergy) analyses. Finally, an interpretation of entropy production in the context of ecological sustainability and finite resources is offered, based on the finite entropy disposal rate of the earth, which enables the reader to evaluate the meaning of the presented results.