The Importance of Chemical Research to the U.S. Economy (2022) / Chapter Skim
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3 Sustainability for the Chemical Economy
3 Sustainability for the Chemical Economy
Pages 61-100
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From page 61... ...
• Market- and purchasing-based policies and tools can be key in supporting a green and circular economy. • Many areas of decarbonization, sustainability, and climate improvement will benefit from advances in fundamental chemical research coupled with design and collabora tion with other areas of science and engineering.
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From page 62... ...
Basic chemistry and associated industries have made tremendous contributions toward meeting the SDGs, but have also created products and processes that contribute to the climate and ecological crises. To address these crises, the chemical economy will need to make a transformative shift in which sustainability and decarbonization are central tenets.
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From page 63... ...
Debates continue on the use of these products: Should they be used in specific circumstances when benefits outweigh the costs; should they be severely restricted or banned to incentivize the search for more benign substitutes; and is a complete overhaul of the fundamental approach in that particular sphere needed or even possible TABLE 3-1 Examples of Basic Chemical Research Contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals Example Description Relevant SDGs (SDG #) Haber-Bosch See Section 1.3.1 Zero Hunger (2)
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From page 64... ...
. The PFAS incidents, alongside other contaminant and waste issues, underscore that industries within the chemical economy cannot simply take support from the public as a given, but will need to ensure that public good, public health, and protecting the environment are central to their mission (Mazzucato and Li, 2021)
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From page 65... ...
Select research areas in support of these aims are discussed in Section 3.4. The shift is likely to proceed when existing companies reorient their goals and new entrants that operate in the new paradigm join the chemical economy.
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From page 66... ...
For instance, the Green Chemistry
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From page 67... ...
. 3.2.1 Benefits of the Move Toward Sustainability As highlighted in Chapter 2, the chemical economy is global and highly competitive, which complicates technology investments, especially where changes will incur cost increases.
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From page 68... ...
. The shift to green chemistry has both increased company profits and reduced their environmental footprint.
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From page 69... ...
. This could lead the financial sector to reassess its financing of the chemical sector, particularly those that are more prone to risks from direct climate impacts or from risks to existing business models from climate mitigation actions, including regulations to curb GHG emissions (Gamper-Rabindran, 2022)
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From page 70... ...
. Simultaneously, there is an expectation that the proposed legislation will result in increased funding for innovation that the chemical industry will need to develop different business 4 These figures would capture both energy reduction from a shift out of energy-intensive products and a shift to cleaner energy sources.
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From page 71... ...
chemical industry to decarbonize and compete in an economy that values energy efficiency and reduced carbon emissions. 3.2.2.3 Domestic Pressure for Sustainability Chemical companies have faced significant legal liability and financial penalty when their products adversely affect public health.
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From page 72... ...
China implemented the National Sword Policy in 2018, which bans the import of most plastic waste material, and the 2019 Amendments to the Basel Convention list plastic waste as conditionally hazardous. Effective January 2021, signatories to the Basel Convention are restricted in what plastic waste shipments they can export to developing countries (Seay et al., 2020)
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From page 73... ...
3.2.3 Challenges for Decarbonization and Sustainability of the Chemical Economy Fully operationalizing the shift to sustainability and decarbonization will require reorientation of investment and production patterns for companies in the chemical sector and their entire supply chain. To make such an expensive and financially risky pivot, the private sector will need assurance that this shift can be profitable and will be applied in a harmonized fashion so they can maintain a long-term competitive position.
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From page 74... ...
call for robust government investment in research that advances understanding of how chemical products and processes affect health and the environment. That research is fundamental to building the body of scientific evidence to enable the promulgation of regulations, which in turn can incentivize a shift to more sustainable products and processes.
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From page 75... ...
Previous studies have shown that there is a growing interest in green chemistry products -- "chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances" (Golden et al., 2021)
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From page 76... ...
. The Act states that "sustainable chemistry can improve the efficiency with which natural resources are used to meet human needs for chemical products while avoiding environmental harm, reduce, or eliminate the emissions of and exposures to hazardous substances, minimize the use of resources, and benefit the economy, people, and the environment." The Sustainable Chemistry R&D Act is meant to coordinate interagency efforts to accelerate U.S.
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From page 77... ...
3.4.1 Sustainability Assessments Global environmental and safety regulations for new and existing chemicals and materials are aimed at encouraging development of technologies that are inherently safer and sustainable TABLE 3-2 Opportunities for Fundamental Chemical Research and How They Contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals Opportunity Description Relevant SDGs (SDG #) Life-cycle assessments (LCAs)
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From page 78... ...
For example, the American Chemical Society's Green Chemistry Institute has made available several tools to guide the selection of green reagents, including the Green Chemistry Innovation Scorecard Calculator.7 The EPA has introduced online tools to estimate the effects of chemical processes and products on the environment and human health. These include the environmental fate, bioaccumulation, and toxicity of chemicals.8 New tools continue to evolve, incorporating predictive toxicology, product biodegradability, and even social dimensions as part of a comprehensive sustainability assessment (Zimmerman et al., 2020)
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From page 79... ...
Continued research on the interconnectedness of chemicals, the environment, and society remains critical, and advancing basic understanding of individual chemicals and methodologies will increase our ability to understand the whole enterprise. 3.4.2 Resource-Efficient Chemistry Feedstocks that come from greener sources and allow for more efficient reactions will be vital to the green chemistry landscape.
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From page 80... ...
Today, polymeric materials can be found in almost everything that we touch and see, from food packaging to single-use disposable medical equipment to excipients in pills. Plastics are an important and well-integrated part of the chemical economy.
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From page 81... ...
3.4.2.2 Sustainable Synthesis For the chemical industry, sustainability means safer chemistry, sustainable products, and circular chemistry with carbon efficiency. Sustainable chemical synthesis is one key part of a sustainable chemical economy.
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From page 82... ...
The use of plastics for food packaging also increases the level of organic contamination of single-use plastics in the waste stream, thus requiring cleaning. Thus, plastics recycling requires multiple steps, each with different energetic and logistical costs: the plastic waste is first collected, then sorted, often by hand, and processed before a pure feedstock is available to be reused.
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From page 83... ...
3.4.3 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategies GHG emissions -- primarily CO2 -- are largely the result of fossil fuel combustion. Fundamental chemical research can play critical roles in helping to establish renewable energy sources, electrification of engines, and improved methods of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)
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From page 84... ...
However, to make hydrocarbon fuels, biomass often requires the addition of hydrogen to selectively remove the oxygen atoms. Mapping a transition for the existing chemical economy to evolve into a sustainable one is discussed in Sections 3.1–3.3.
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From page 85... ...
, integrated green chemistry and engineering approaches are needed that valorize all fractionated biomass components through use of renewable energy, regenerable green solvents, and catalysts (Clarke et al., 2018)
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From page 86... ...
technologies are deployed to reduce these emissions, the hydrogen thus produced is termed "blue" hydrogen. However, a recent report suggested that the life-cycle GHG emissions of blue hydrogen could be quite high when the release of fugitive methane is taken into account.
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From page 87... ...
This will require large investments and extensive collaborations among chemists, chemical engineers, geochemists, geologists, policy makers, civic leaders, and politicians from local to federal. In a recent announcement, 14 petrochemical companies operating in Houston, Texas agreed to collaborate on the development of FIGURE 3-7 Flow of CO2 through carbon capture, utilization, and storage.
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From page 88... ...
In addition to sequestering captured CO2, there are opportunities for captured CO2 to be used in industrial process streams, either directly as CO2 or after chemically transforming it to other molecules. The National Academies' report Gaseous Carbon Waste Streams Utilization: Status and Research Needs (NASEM, 2019c)
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From page 89... ...
Because the resultant methane is an energetic molecule, there are proposals to use the conversion of CO2 to methane as a means to store excess renewable energy utilizing the current natural gas infrastructure (Schaaf et al., 2014)
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From page 90... ...
The CO2-curing process strengthens the concrete and thus permits less cement to be used per batch of concrete, which means fewer emissions at the cement plant. Solidia Technologies produces a proprietary alternative to Portland cement in kilns at lower tempera tures than the 1,450°C used conventionally, which lowers GHG emissions by ~30% compared with Port land cement production.
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From page 91... ...
SOURCE: Grim et al., 2020. Conversion of CO2 to methane may have less utility than conversion to other chemicals, as there are currently fewer large-scale chemical processes based on methane as a feedstock outside of its reoxidation to syngas or its use for making hydrogen cyanide.
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From page 92... ...
For example, LanzaTech has commercialized a 46-kiloton/year ethanol process with its proprietary acetogen, using steel mill waste gases as the carbon source. The LanzaTech technology utilizes a proprietary anaerobic acetogen, which is derived from a bacteria originally found in cat droppings.
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From page 93... ...
government and the private sector should support • Research and development in carbon utilization technologies to develop pathways for making valuable products and to remove technical barriers to waste stream utilization; • The development of new life-cycle assessment and technoeconomic tools and benchmark assessments that will enable consistent and transparent evaluation of carbon utilization technologies; and • The development of enabling technologies and resources such as low- or zero-carbon hydrogen and electricity generation technologies to advance the development of carbon utilization technologies with a net life-cycle reduction of greenhouse gas emissions." (NASEM, 2019c)
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From page 94... ...
Liu et al., 2021) and highlighted the health benefits that reducing the dependence on fossil fuels could have if appropriately managed.
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From page 95... ...
Although most places with access to centralized treatment facilities have safe water, for some rural areas, particularly in geographic locations with fewer resources, access to potable water is quite limited (Figure 3-14)
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From page 96... ...
. 3.4.4.3 Food Safety A 2020 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations highlights how truly global the food supply has become.
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From page 97... ...
. While there is no evidence of a link between SARS-CoV-2 infections and food ingestion, concerns around COVID-19 and the subsequent supply-chain disruptions have heightened interest in advancing food security monitoring, pathogen detection, and food safety–related applications.
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From page 98... ...
Unfortunately, markets and public policies have yet to fully reward sustainability and climate protection in ways that enhance profitability and incentivize companies to invest in a shift to sustainability. Notably, some companies that have embraced green chemistry and circular economy principles have become more competitive or, at least, remained competitive.
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From page 99... ...
As the chemical enterprise continues to look for areas where chemical research could make the largest impact in sustainability, there are a number of concrete areas where initial steps have already been made, and further advancement is possible. The areas that are prime for chemical innovation include • better measurements for life-cycle assessments; • enhancement of recycling technologies and co-design of plastic products for recyclability; • sustainable syntheses; • sustainable feedstocks and energy sources; • carbon capture, utilization, and storage; • monitoring and improving air quality; • monitoring and improving water safety; and • monitoring and improving food safety; Conclusion 3-5: As the world moves deeper into its current energy transition -- includ ing the switch to electric vehicles, the implementation of clean energy alternatives, and the use of new feedstock sources -- coupled with an increasing focus on circularity, the committee expects that decarbonization, computation, measurement, and automation will significantly alter the operations and processes of current industries, creating new opportunities and challenges that will benefit from fundamental chemistry and chemical engineering advances.
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