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A growing number of organizations across a variety of industries are now pursuing sustainable management business goals to improve business efficiency, manage stakeholder expectations, or for legislative compliance. This is also the case for automotive manufacturing organizations who are under pressure from their stakeholders to manage and improve sustainability performance. This requires the development of credible measurement tools and systems to enable capture and monitoring of sustainability. This paper describes the development process for an innovative model, named the Automotive Sustainability Assessment Model (A‐SAM), to drive sustainable decision‐making in the automotive sector. The process of developing the model consisted of four major steps, each of which contained series of intermediate steps, individual objectives, and research methods. The model measures, quantifies, and translates a broad range of external effects (both positive and negative) into their monetary equivalents, enabling large car manufacturers to evaluate options, identify win–wins, and optimize trade‐off, while making complex and multidisciplinary sustainability decisions. It allows managers and design engineers in the automotive sector to develop a better understanding of the environmental, resource, and social impacts of their activities, products, processes, and materials used, while still ensuring cost‐effectiveness when making decisions. The A‐SAM shows promise as an effective tool for supporting sustainability decisions in a business environment. Although developed in the context of the automotive industry, it can be adapted by organizations of any type, operating across many different sectors for managing sustainability in a more holistic, comprehensive, and integrated manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last few decades, phytoremediation process has attracted much attention because of the growing concerns about the deteriorating quality of soil caused by anthropogenic activities. Here, a tandem phytoremediation/biorefinery process was proposed as a way to turn phytoremediation into a viable commercial method by producing valuable chemicals in addition to cleaned soil. Two agricultural plants (Sinapis albaandHelianthus annuus) were grown in moderately contaminated soil withca.100 ppm of Ni and further degraded by a fungal lignin degrader—Phanerochaete chrysosporium. Several parameters have been studied, including the viability of plants, biomass yield, and their accumulating and remediating potentials. Further, downstream processing showed that up to 80% of Ni can be easily extracted from contaminated biomass by aqueous extraction at mild conditions. Finally, it was demonstrated that the growth of plants on the contaminated soil could be degraded byP. chrysosporium, and the effect of nickel and biomass pretreatment on the solid-state fermentation was studied. The proposed and studied methodology in this work could pave the way for successful commercialization of the phytoremediation process in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This review surveys the problem of surface contamination of cars, which poses a growing engineering challenge to vehicle manufacturers, operators and users. Both the vision of drivers and the visibility of vehicles need to be maintained under a wide range of environmental conditions. This requires managing the flow of surface water on windscreens and side glazing. The rate of deposition of solid contaminants on glazing, lights, licence plates and external mirrors also needs to be minimised. Maintaining vehicle aesthetics and limiting the transfer of contaminants to the hands and clothes of users from soiled surfaces are also significant issues. Recently, keeping camera lenses clean has emerged as a key concern, as these systems transition from occasional manoeuvring aids to sensors for safety systems. The deposition of water and solid contaminants on to car surfaces is strongly influenced by unsteady vehicle aerodynamic effects. Airborne water droplets falling as rain or lifted as spray by tyres interact with wakes, vortices and shear flows and accumulate on vehicle surfaces as a consequence. The same aerodynamic effects also control the movement of surface water droplets, rivulets and films; hence, particular attention is paid to the management of surface water over the front side glass and the deposition of contaminants on the rear surfaces. The test methods used in the automotive industry are reviewed, as are the numerical simulation techniques. [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]

A detailed understanding of charge density and its origins during the electrospinning process is desirable for developing new electrospinnable polymer-solvent systems and ensuring mathematical models of the process are accurate. In this work, two different approaches were taken to alter the charge density in order to measure its effect on the Taylor cone, mass deposition rate and initial jet diameter. It was found that an increase in charge density results in a decrease in the mass deposition rate and initial jet diameter. A theory is proposed for this behaviour in that an increase in charge density leads to the tip of the Taylor cone forming a smaller radius of curvature resulting in the concentration of electric stresses at the tip. This leads to the electrostatic forces drawing the initial jet from a smaller effective area or "virtual orifice". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to a correspondence by Jonathan Gressel on gender issues in rural settings in the December 2009.

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]

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: This paper examines the possibilities of using an established energy crop; Miscanthus giganteus as a filler/reinforcement in injection mouldable thermoplastic composites utilising a starch-based biopolymer; Novamont Mater-Bi as the matrix. A design of experiments methodology was used to reveal how varying the processing parameters and material formulation affected the impact performance of the biocomposite. The addition of Miscanthus fibres to the polymer results in composites with higher impact absorbance and loading than those of standard Mater-Bi. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]