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Widespread use of carbon fibre across various industry sectors remains limited due to the high costs of the raw materials and energy demands during production. Furthermore, the environmental impacts associated with its manufacturing process, may significantly reduce the potential benefits of weight reduction or material savings in the end products. Despite the excellent mechanical and chemical properties, which would make the material a viable substitute in a wide range of applications, further production and cost improvements are necessary to raise interest and demand. The scarcity of available carbon fibre production related data and the confidentiality of the few commercial carbon fibre suppliers hinders further research efforts towards these improvements. This paper proposes a dynamic, modular Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) concept tailored for carbon fibre production and is based on a pilot production set-up (120t/year). The model is intended to accelerate the assessment of carbon fibre production and serves as a tool for the exploration of various scenarios, including alternative precursor material, different carbon fibre grades or varying production parameters. In this paper the model is specified, embedded in the environment it is intended to be used and applied to a production setup based on data collected using the pilot scale carbonisation line at Carbon Nexus, a unique, open-access carbon fibre/composite research facility in Victoria, Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life cycle engineering (LCE) methods are essential in the development of next generation energy storage systems in order to avoid harmful unintended environmental consequences. Moreover, the integration of life cycle knowledge early in the development stage of such technologies can lead to improved performance in regard to their environmental impact. Extensive information from all stages is needed to understand interdependencies along the life cycle, e.g. between required raw materials, applied processing parameters and lifetime behaviour of the battery. From an LCE perspective, the development of detailed and representative inventories for the assessment of traction batteries is a time and resource intensive process, which requires a difficult synchronization with product development activities. A cyber and physical integration of Life Cycle Technologies in a product system offers the potential to reduce data collection efforts while enhancing its robustness and reliability. Life Cycle Technologies can refer to any product- or process- integrated data acquisition technology, e.g. sensors, which can be leveraged to provide knowledge about a product's life cycle performance. In this paper, we introduce the concept of Life Cycle Technologies and their potential to maximize the functionality of traction batteries while reducing their life cycle environmental impact. Furthermore, we present a reference architecture aiming at the development and integration of such technologies. Finally, we illustrate its application in a case study of All Solid State Batteries and discuss its usability in the development of new generation battery systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There are several globally recognized methods for preparing laboratory samples. Of these, the QuEChERS and QuPPe methods are commonly used for food laboratory sample preparation. As an alternative, we developed the fractionation method using FraMiTrACR., Objective: We present a life cycle assessment for the QuEChERS-, QuPPe- and FraMiTrACR methods. Our objective was to collect data to evaluate the carbon footprint of each method. However, as the ecological factors alone do not inform suitability of any given method, we also evaluated economic factors., Methods: Our life cycle assessments followed ISO 14040/44 to determine the carbon footprint of each method. Also, we have analyzed existing data to support our comparison of all three methods., Results: The mass of consumables and packaging for our FraMiTrACR method was observed to decrease by 45% and 34% from those required for the QuPPe and QuEChERS methods, respectively. Furthermore, we calculated a 43% reduction in carbon footprint when using FraMiTrACR compared to QuPPe and a 31% reduction compared to QuEChERS. In addition, we determined that our method offers time savings >87% and >71% compared to QuEChERS and QuPPe, respectively. The main economic benefit of FraMiTrACR comes from 84% and 70% labor cost savings compared to QuEChERS and QuPPe, respectively. The laboratory using fractionation method can process 320 samples with FraMiTrACR within 8 hours, an 87% increase in potential compared to QuEChERS and a 71% increase compared to QuPPe., Conclusions: Fractionation using FraMiTrACR is a more sustainable method for analytical sample preparation, offering the same quality of results and far-reaching economic advantages., Highlights: In comparison, FraMiTrACR uses up to 45% less consumables and packaging by weight and a reduction in kg CO2eq of up to 43%. In addition, the fractionation method offers up to 85% time savings and up to an 84% reduction in labor cost per sample., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of AOAC INTERNATIONAL. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)