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The electric vehicle market is an increasingly important aspect of the automotive industry. However, as a relatively new technology, several issues remain present within the industry. An analysis is utilised to examine these issues, along with how they affect the industry and how they can be tackled. Several key issues that affect the electric vehicle market, as well as how efforts to address these issues influence the market, are identified. The analysis also includes the examination of ethical issues, with the issues that arise from the production of raw materials for electric vehicles. The analysis and examination of ethical issues display a wide range of problems in the industry. However, it did highlight the efforts being made to lessen the effect of these problems by various groups, such as regulation by EU and US governing bodies on the materials mined. From this analysis, this paper identifies that many of the other factors examined are directly or indirectly influenced by political and economic factors, also examined in this review. This highlights the impact that governing bodies and businesses have on a vast number of issues that are present within the market and how they can resolve the harmful factors examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assessment of the implementation of green chemistry principles in the syntheses of nanomaterials is a complex decision-making problem that necessitates the integration of several evaluation criteria. Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA) provides support for such a challenge. One of its methods – Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA) – was used in this research to develop a model for the green chemistry-based classification of silver nanoparticle synthesis protocols into preference-ordered performance classes. DRSA allowed integration of knowledge from both peer-reviewed literature and experts (decision makers, DMs) in the field, resulting in a model composed of decision rules that are logical statements in the form: “if conditions, then decision”. The approach provides the basis for the design of rules for the greener synthesis of silver nanoparticles. Decision rules are supported by synthesis protocols that enforce the principles of green chemistry to various extents, resulting in robust recommendations for the development and assessment of silver nanoparticle synthesis that perform at one of five pre-determined levels. The DRSA-based approach is transparent and structured and can be easily updated. New perspectives and criteria could be added into the model if relevant data were available and domain-specific experts could collaborate through the MCDA procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability assessments require the management of a wide variety of information types, parameters and uncertainties. Multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been regarded as a suitable set of methods to perform sustainability evaluations as a result of its flexibility and the possibility of facilitating the dialogue between stakeholders, analysts and scientists. However, it has been reported that researchers do not usually properly define the reasons for choosing a certain MCDA method instead of another. Familiarity and affinity with a certain approach seem to be the drivers for the choice of a certain procedure. This review paper presents the performance of five MCDA methods (i.e. MAUT, AHP, PROMETHEE, ELECTRE and DRSA) in respect to ten crucial criteria that sustainability assessments tools should satisfy, among which are a life cycle perspective, thresholds and uncertainty management, software support and ease of use. The review shows that MAUT and AHP are fairly simple to understand and have good software support, but they are cognitively demanding for the decision makers, and can only embrace a weak sustainability perspective as trade-offs are the norm. Mixed information and uncertainty can be managed by all the methods, while robust results can only be obtained with MAUT. ELECTRE, PROMETHEE and DRSA are non-compensatory approaches which consent to use a strong sustainability concept, accept a variety of thresholds, but suffer from rank reversal. DRSA is less demanding in terms of preference elicitation, is very easy to understand and provides a straightforward set of decision rules expressed in the form of elementary “if … then …” conditions. Dedicated software is available for all the approaches with a medium to wide range of results capability representation. DRSA emerges as the easiest method, followed by AHP, PROMETHEE and MAUT, while ELECTRE is regarded as fairly difficult. Overall, the analysis has shown that most of the requirements are satisfied by the MCDA methods (although to different extents) with the exclusion of management of mixed data types and adoption of life cycle perspective which are covered by all the considered approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study was designed to ascertain if the addition of lignin to hemp-epoxy composites was beneficial to their mechanical properties. Composites were made using a VARTM method with a two-part epoxy resin and a non-woven hemp fibre mat. Lignin was added to the resin before infusion at concentrations varying between 0 and 10% w/w. Samples were then tested according to the relevant ISO standards. There was an increase in impact properties of the fabricated composites with the energy absorbed by the composite containing 5% w/w lignin being 145% higher than the composite with no lignin added. Both flexural and tensile modulus showed an increase when lignin was added up to 2.5% w/w, although there was a drop in both when the lignin was increased to 5% w/w, attributed to poor mixing and infusion due to the increased viscosity of the resin. In all cases, the addition of lignin increased the structural properties of the composites to some degree when compared with composites with no additional lignin. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Reaction of N-alkyl-N-arylsulfonyl-2-halo-propionamides with pentamethyldiethylenetriamine and either CuBr or CuCl leads to 2-aryl propionamides via initial radical generation, 1,4-aryl migration with loss of SO2 and reduction of the intermediate amidyl radical in 40–99% yields. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Reaction of N-alkyl-N-(trichloroacetyl)arylsulfonamides with CuCl/amines leads to N-alkyl-N-(dichloroacetyl)-arylsulfonamides via reduction or N-alkyl-aryldichloroacetamides via 1,4-aryl migration with loss of SO2. The ratio of reduction to aryl migration is dependent upon the temperature and the ligand utilised. Along with amide bond hydrolysis these reactions may compete when carrying out slow atom transfer radical cyclisation reactions using sulfonamides. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

To meet sustainability objectives in the transport sector, natural fiber (NF) and recycled carbon fiber (RCF) have been developed, although they have been typically limited to low to medium performance components. This work has considered the effect of interlayer hybridization of woven NF and non-woven RCF with woven virgin carbon fibers (VCF) on the mechanical and damping performance of hybrid laminates, produced using double bag vacuum infusion (DBVI). The mean damping ratio of the pure laminates showed a trend of NF>RCF>VCF, which was inversely proportional to their modulus. The tensile, flexural and damping properties of hybrid laminates were dominated by the outermost ply. The VCF-RCF and VCF-NF hybrid laminates showed a comparatively greater mean damping ratio. The results of this work demonstrate a method for the uptake of alternative materials with a minimal impact on the mechanical properties and improved damping performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]