The pair submitted their proposal, “Strategic Investment to Scale-up Aviation Biofuel,” to the Climate CoLab’s Aviation contest category. They proposed that one large country (the U.S., China, or Brazil) or coordinated region (e.g., the EU) intensely ramp up aviation biofuel production, along with associated coproducts such as diesel fuel, to a level of about 120 million tons of biomass by the year 2030. They specifically focused on the feasibility of China to contribute to this initiative.

Emphasizing technology development for aviation biofuel within a particular country would result in gaining expertise in the most efficient pathway. Plausible ways to develop a stable supply and demand for biofuel include the following:

• Collaborating with neighboring countries to establish an efficient supply chain.
• Working with suppliers and airlines that are taking initiatives to use biofuel.
• A common fuel distribution system can be established in the airports of China, similar to the bioports implemented in Amsterdam, Holland and Oslo, Norway. This way all the operators flying into these airports will be refueled by biofuel.
• With the European Union including the aviation industry in its emission trading system since 2012, a strategic alignment could be made between the EU and China to substantiate the investment.

Arulselvan and Thomas’s proposal was particularly commended by the contest judges for its potential impact to considerably reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

To learn more about the pair’s proposal, read here: http://bit.ly/2cJQPjU.

Watch a video about the pair’s work here: https://youtu.be/un9Ve3V5w8M.

About Valerie Thomas and Suriya Arulselvan

Suriya Arulselvan is a process modeling engineer at Aspen Technology in Bedford, MA. She has a Master of Science in chemical engineering from Georgia Tech, and a Bachelor of Technology in chemical engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchipappalli.

Valerie Thomas is the Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems in ISyE, with a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy. Her research interests are energy and materials efficiency, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Current research projects include the environmental impacts of biofuels and electricity system policy and planning.

About the Climate CoLab

The goal of the Climate CoLab is to harness the collective intelligence of thousands of people from all around the world to address global climate change.

Inspired by systems like Wikipedia and Linux, the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence has developed this crowdsourcing platform where people work with experts and each other to create, analyze, and select detailed proposals for what to do about climate change.

By constructively engaging a broad range of scientists, policy makers, business people, investors, and concerned citizens, the hope is that the Climate CoLab will help to develop, and gain support for, climate change plans that are better than any that would have otherwise been developed.

Anyone can join the Climate CoLab community and participate. Community members are invited to submit and comment on proposals outlining ideas for what they think should be done about climate change. In some contests, members create proposals for specific kinds of actions such as generating electric power with fewer emissions or changing social attitudes about climate change. In other contests, members combine ideas from many other proposals to create integrated climate action plans for a country, a group of countries, or the whole world. Experts evaluate the entries and pick finalists, and then both experts and community members select the most promising proposals.

“Please consider joining with others at Georgia Tech by making a contribution,” said Valerie Thomas, campaign chair. “This year's charity list includes local charities from across the regions of Georgia, as well as national and international charities. Find one that you like and give it your support.”

The GASCCP is a benefit for State of Georgia and University System employees that allows contributions to the charity of choice through payroll deductions or a one-time donation.

Giving online through OneUSG Connect is the preferred method because it is confidential, secure, and simple to use.

To contribute:

· Log in to OneUSG Connect and select “Make SCCP Contribution” on the “State Charitable Contributions Program” button in the upper left of the Employee Self Service screen.

· Select “Make Charitable Campaign Pledge” and follow the instructions.

· Choose “Payroll Deduction” to set up the amount you choose to pledge in equal installments. Deductions will begin January 2023.

· If you would rather download a pledge form, you can complete it and submit with your check to your unit ambassador or to Valerie Thomas at 415 Groseclose, ISyE.  

Additional details about the campaign can be found at charitable.gatech.edu.

Trees naturally capture carbon dioxide, the most significant greenhouse gas, and Georgia already has a registry for carbon held by living trees. But trees used for construction also hold about half their weight in carbon, Gentry said.

“So if you have 100,000 pounds of wood in your building, then there’s 50,000 pounds of carbon that’s sequestered in that wood [for the life of the building].”

Gentry will lead the committee’s approach as they create a carbon-tracking process for trees used in construction. Wood building materials will then be part of the state’s carbon registry, which will allow carbon credits to be bought and sold.

The committee also relies on Valerie Thomas, the Anderson-Interface Chair of Natural Systems in the H. Milton School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, to determine net carbon benefit of sustainable materials versus conventional construction materials.

Thomas brings expertise in life cycle assessment to the committee. She looks at the whole life of the building material, from manufacture to disposal, to develop an accurate idea of environmental impact.

“Some of the part I’m especially tasked with is, ‘How do you quantify this? How much is it?’,” Thomas said.

It’s not as simple as adding up the weight of lumber used and dividing by half. “We have transportation, sawmills, and treatment,” she said, “and we’re probably using fossil fuels to do it.”

The environmental cost of all those processes must be compared to the costs of processes associated with concrete and metal frame buildings.

To make sure the credit for captured carbon is meaningful, “We have to look at all that to make sure the comparison is quantitatively sensible.”

California and Canada's British Columbia have related carbon-tracking systems, which provide incentives for using their timber in construction.

“Georgia is the largest forestry state in terms of structural lumber production,” said Gentry, “but we don’t have a lot of mass timber being produced from Southern Pine, so that’s considered to be a competitive disadvantage for the southeastern United States.”

This amendment to the current carbon registry provides incentive to use Georgia timber in construction, rather than bringing it in from other states. It will also help builders prove their commitment to greener development, Gentry said.

“Mass timber ties the logging and forestry industry -- a core business of rural Georgia -- to Atlanta where we have this huge influx of people. Cities need to build lots of multifamily housing, but in a thoughtful and environmentally conscious way,” said Gentry.

“This project speaks so well to both Georgias, and I think that’s part of the challenge we see in many things right now, is knitting that together. If there’s a win on both sides, it’s a good win.”

Building Taller and Cleaner with Mass Timber

At the Digital Building Lab, Georgia Tech researchers develop new ways of using mass timber in commercial construction.

“Mass timber is a process of cutting a tree up into lots of small pieces, essentially observing and removing the defects and then putting those boards back together to make huge pieces of wood,” said Gentry.

“This could be a panel of wood 10 feet by 40 feet by a foot and a half thick,” he said. “That's like a piece of plywood on steroids. That can become a floor system in a 20-story building.”

Mass timber is a relatively new technology: in 2021 Georgia building codes were updated to allow for timber buildings taller than 5 stories using the new mass timber technology. These changes allow for taller and more cost-competitive mass timber buildings.

Very few buildings in the state use mass timber technology. Two local examples are the Kendeda Building, on the Georgia Tech campus, and T3 West Midtown, a 7-story office building in Atlantic Station, near the Georgia Tech Campus.

Although the committee is not the first research group to look at carbon held in buildings, they will still have to develop new models to compare how much wood construction captures carbon as compared to traditional steel, Thomas said.

But, she said, the research is so new that “we can’t just look at what everybody else does and say, ‘that's what we're doing’.”

According to Thomas, the committee is “defining the regulations that will make it possible to have mass timber buildings that sequester carbon in the state of Georgia, and I expect that the procedure we use will be used by others also in the USA and in other countries. So we’re directly applying our expertise to support the state of Georgia.”

One implicit consequence of the amended carbon registry is that it “encourages building these innovative types of buildings in Georgia,” said Thomas.

“I grow my tree. I cut it down. I make a building with it so it's just sitting over there for hopefully a very long time. And then I grow another tree. So I'm taking carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it into buildings on a continuing basis.”

For carbon sequestration to have an impact on the environment, “we're not talking one or two buildings in Atlanta. It has to be really large scale,” said Thomas.

“If we’re going to get the climate stabilized at 1.5 degrees centigrade increase, we’ve got to have some kind of technology for taking carbon out of the atmosphere.”

Growing a New Industry at Georgia Tech

And cultivating a new type of construction is no small endeavor, Gentry said.

“The mass timber problem is one of integration. It’s not like there’s a specific problem with adhesive bond lines or the density of wood. The real problem is the entire ecosystem that it’s going to take to make a mass timber industry in Georgia.”

Mass timber components require development of sophisticated manufacturing techniques.

“There’s tremendous capital expense for the presses that make these materials, and automation and CNC equipment that cuts these things into the kind of interlocking shapes that come to the job site and make these buildings so easy to erect,” Gentry said.

“In the Digital Fabrication Lab (DFL) we have much of that equipment. Our students are learning to run that equipment, and so this semester our students are exploring the design and economic potential of mass timber, looking at not only design of buildings, but also the technical aspects of prefabricating the components and bringing them to the site.”

The fact that Gentry and his students can prototype and deliver these building components right from the DFL amplifies the impact, he said. “I think one of the huge strengths of Georgia Tech is its ability to deliver not just knowledge, but instances of that knowledge applied.”

Gentry speaks from experience: he’s an alumnus of the Institute as well as a decades-long faculty member of the Schools of Architecture and Civil and Environmental Engineering. So, too is another member of the Sustainable Building Material Technical Advisory Committee, Devon Dartnell (EE '84) Director of Market Analysis and Research at the Georgia Forestry Commission, and a Georgia timberland owner. Dartnell manages the work of the committee for the Forestry Commission.

The legislation identifies the specific viewpoints and expertise required to craft the new sustainable building carbon registry. Members include Edie Sonnie Hall, a life cycle analysis consultant from Washington State; Brian Campa, Principal at Cooper Carry; Jacek Siry, Professor of Forest Economics at the University of Georgia; Troy Harris, Managing Director of Timberland at Jamestown; Ted Miltiades, Director of Construction Codes and Industrialized Buildings at Georgia Department of Community Affairs; and Bill Howard,  General Manager of Claude Howard Lumber Company.

Thomas, who holds a joint appointment in Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy, is an expert in life cycle assessment, sustainability, and science and technology policy. Her current research projects include life cycle assessment of biofuels made from algae, of carbon dioxide captured from air, of chemicals made from biomass, and of alternative technologies for conventional and urban agriculture. 

Under Thomas’ leadership, the committee will consider direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions; that is, direct greenhouse gas emissions from producing feedstock for fuel and making and using the fuel, and emissions from indirect effects such as land use change. Indirect effects can occur, for example, when land used for one purpose – such as growing corn for food – instead is used to grow feedstock for biofuel. 

The committee will also consider key assumptions and the quality of the data used to estimate greenhouse gas emissions, and may assess needs for additional data and model development. The group also will consider methods used to evaluate biofuels, electricity as a transportation fuel, hydrogen fuels, low-carbon diesel fuels, and aviation and maritime fuels, among others.

“Transportation is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and multiple alternative-fuel technologies are being developed to address this challenging problem,” said Thomas. “Our committee has been tasked with providing recommendations for potential use in a national low-carbon fuels program. Our aim is to provide policy makers and the public with a robust, useful set of findings on the state-of-the-science in evaluating greenhouse gas emissions of low-carbon transportation fuels.”

“It takes people a long time to gather their firewood,” explained Valerie Thomas, Anderson-Interface Professor of Natural Systems in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE).

“A lot of these areas face deforestation, which not only cuts down on wildlife but also makes it harder for people to gather firewood; as the trees get cut down, the forest gets further away from the village.”

In addition to these deforestation challenges, cooking indoors with biomass fuels (which many people do) creates air pollution, leading to negative health effects. Thomas is conducting research on solar cooking and parabolic stoves, studying how this simple technology can help people in Rwanda address both issues.

“I’m really enthusiastic about finding better ways for people to cook, especially using solar,” Thomas said. “There are limitations — for example, you can’t do your cooking when the sun isn’t out. But there are also a lot of advantages. You don’t need to gather anything, it works well, it’s very inexpensive, and there are a lot of different options.”

The cooking initiative is one part of the work Thomas has been doing in Rwanda. Since 2016, she has collaborated with industry practitioners, as well as researchers and students from ISyE, to determine the best way to bring sustainable energy to the people of rural Africa.

“There is minimal access to grid electricity in rural Africa,” said Thomas. “We’re using operations research techniques to examine future development scenarios that will help governments make better infrastructure decisions and balance supply and demand.”

In addition to the lack of energy infrastructure, Africa also faces a shortage of Ph.D.s to help solve these complex issues. To address this problem, Thomas serves as an international advisor to graduate students at the African Center of Excellence in Energy for Sustainable Development, a pan-African program at the University of Rwanda established with support from the World Bank Group. Supporting trained Ph.D.s and students in Africa who will continue to research these issues is key to the region’s future success.

Many people are familiar with ethanol — a popular biofuel mixed with gasoline — and how it’s made in the United States: from corn. Second-generation biofuel is also coming on to the market, made from inedible plant materials such as corn stalks, leaves, and cobs.

Now, thanks to a $6.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), a third generation of biofuel is being developed via blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria.

The three-year grant was jointly awarded to Algenol, an industrial biotechnology company; Georgia Tech; the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; and Reliance Industries under the DOE’s Advancements in Algal Biomass Yield, Phase 2 (ABY2) program to produce biocrude and co-products. Valerie Thomas, the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering’s Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems, and Matthew Realff, the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering’s Professor and David Wang Sr. Fellow, are the lead researchers from Georgia Tech.

This grant will enable the team to explore the environmental process and impacts of cyanobacteria-produced biofuels and other high-value chemicals. The ethanol is extracted from the algae’s water and nutrient bath in a process that is similar to whiskey distillation. Algenol has developed a process that produces pure ethanol from very dilute ethanol in a way that is highly energy efficient.

Why is cyanobacteria as a source for ethanol so promising? Principally, cyanobacteria-produced biofuel is environmentally friendly — for a number of reasons.

As Thomas explained, “The algae are grown in photobioreactors, which are basically large plastic bags, along with water and nutrients. The plastic bags hang in rows out in the sun, and there’s no reason for the land to be good agricultural land. It can be in desert areas or near the coast for shipping. It’s also quite productive per acre compared with land plants [that can be used to make first- or second-generation biofuel].”

In addition, the carbon dioxide that the algae need to grow could be siphoned-off fossil fuel power plant emissions and piped into the photobioreactors. A number of other carbon capture and utilization scenarios for biorefineries have been studied by the Algenol-Georgia Tech team, including stand-alone systems where carbon dioxide is generated on-site. Many of those scenarios show competitive economics and very low carbon footprints compared to gasoline.

Thomas — an expert on greenhouse gas emission evaluation — and Realff — an expert in chemical process modeling and optimization — have been working with Algenol on its biofuel production processes for a number of years. Thomas works in environmental systems analysis, with a main area being life-cycle assessment. This means that she looks at the entire supply chain for producing and using this biofuel. She said that this includes “what kind of fertilizer it uses, how the production facility is built, and the energy used in the facility — how much is used and where it comes from. All the emissions need to be taken into account.”

To proceed to commercial-scale production, the process needs to be both environmentally sound and cost-effective. It’s challenging to make third-generation biofuel that can match today’s historically low petroleum prices. However, Algenol technology can yield other products, including natural food colorants and fertilizers, that are well along in the pipeline.

Expanding on the multi-product approach, the grant team is evaluating additional biofuel components that can be made within an Algenol biorefinery that would be cost-effective and have low environmental impact.

This committee, initially established by the Biomass Research and Development Act of 2000 (Biomass Act), was reauthorized by the Agricultural Act of 2014. As part of this committee, Thomas, the Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems at the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, will assist the USDA and DOE in meeting the Act’s national goals of a healthier rural economy and improved national energy security.

The Act’s main focus is on overcoming key technical challenges through R&D that will lead to an expanded U.S. bio-based industry. Thomas has the responsibility of providing advice to the two departments on matters including biomass research and development; technical focus and direction of requests for proposals issued under the initiative; procedures for reviewing and evaluating requests for proposals; and facilitating consultation and partnerships among federal agencies.

Thomas’ research interests are energy and materials efficiency; sustainability; industrial ecology; technology assessment; international security; and science and technology policy. Current research projects include the environmental impacts of biofuels and electricity system policy and planning.

Thomas received a B.A. in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University. Before coming to Georgia Tech she held positions at Carnegie Mellon University and Princeton University. From 2004 to 2005, Thomas was the American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow. A member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board from 2003 to 2009, Thomas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society.

In order to develop a model for such an infrastructure — one that brings electricity more equitably to rural parts of African countries — researchers from both ISyE and ExxonMobil are working together to create a 30-year model for potential electricity generation. They are focusing particularly onthe east African countries of Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, and the central African country the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Such a problem is compounded, said Valerie Thomas, ISyE’s Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems, because “on the one hand, there are many people without access to electricity and on the other hand, you have the governments and agencies and companies that would build this capacity but also are poor. It’s not that there’s no grid, but there’s not much of one.”

Thomas and ISyE research partner Dima Nazzal, Executive Director of Academic Administration and Student Experience, are confident this problem can be solved, however. “It’s a very difficult problem,” said Nazzal. “We are attempting to design a large-scale complex system that has conflicting performance objectives and significant levels of uncertainty when it comes to electricity generation and storage capacities, electricity demand data, and stakeholders utility, to name a few. But this type of project is perfectly aligned for industrial and systems engineering research. We model these types of systems and try to create robust cost-effective designs – deciding where to locate power plants, where to build the grid network, and how much demand to satisfy, while balancing limited financial and natural resources.”

One possible solution is the hydroelectric resources available in east Africa and other parts of the continent. “There is the potential to build large dams,” explained Thomas, “that could provide electricity reliably in high quantities at low cost, if the generation and transmission system could be built, and if the environmental and social impacts could be addressed. Or, smaller lower-impact hydro power could provide more local solutions.”

Thomas and Nazzal are also considering the balance between fossil fuels such as natural gas or petroleum and more climate-friendly resources such as solar or hydro. ISyE Ph.D. student Amelia Musselman is working with Thomas and Nazzal to develop an optimization model on how to supply electricity to the greatest number of people. She said that right now, she has “the model formulation ready — or at least the first version — and I’m working on programming it and getting the data to solve it.”

ExxonMobil is working in conjunction with the ISyE team to construct models that can evaluate many trade-offs in a systematic manner, by selecting appropriate optimization tools.

According to Thomas, the next step is testing and validating the model to verify that it works: “Then we will do some experiments to answer the big questions about tradeoffs between environmental impact and costs.”

Read the full story here: http://www.rh.gatech.edu/features/rolling-robots

Dr. Valerie Thomas is the Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems in the School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, with a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy. She is also a member of the FAS Board of Experts. Dr. Thomas's research interests are energy systems, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Current research projects include the environmental impacts of biofuels and electricity system policy and planning. Dr. Thomas is a member of the USDA/DOE Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee. In 2004-2005, she was the American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow. Dr. Thomas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Physical Society, and has been a Member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board. She has previously worked at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and at Princeton University’s Environmental Institute. Dr. Thomas received a B.A. in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University.

What made you want to become a scientist or engineer and what is your primary field of focus?

I became a scientist because I was fascinated by quantum physics. I wanted to know about it and I wanted to know more.

But now I am working on a very pragmatic and applied problem: how to create a sustainable energy system. It’s an easy problem. That is, we can solve this and I am confident we will. The challenge is in how gracefully we get there, and the details of the solution.

I keep wanting to get back to theoretical physics. But I love working on energy problems and with so much work to do currently, I haven’t yet found a way to do both.

What was your first science experiment?

Great question. It made me think: What makes something a science experiment, and what makes it mine?

My first experiments were engineering experiments – about making things rather than discovering the world. As a child, I liked to design and make things – out of fabric, paper, yarn, paint – and I liked to explore and build forts in the woods.

So, what makes an experiment “mine"? It’s “mine” simply when I create it and carry it out. In high school  and college, all the science experiments were with a partner, so to me, that doesn’t count. Finally in graduate school, we had a lab course in which we had to carry out the experiment alone, by ourselves. That was great; I worked on superconductivity.

What advice would you give scientists and other technically-trained people in how to apply their knowledge and experience to societal issues and/or to educate policymakers?

I would specifically like to address this question in the context of climate change and energy challenges. In my view, there has been too narrow a focus on the science of climate change and on the impacts of climate change, at the expense of a focus on how we can change our energy and industrial systems. There is huge potential for us to change our systems for the better; there is a very positive message and opportunity here.

My advice is to bring forward any of the myriad innovations, and to convey the happy enthusiasm that we have for continuing to be creative and innovative.

What advice would you give someone trying to break into your field or the scientific and technical worlds in general?

Keep a deep and intense commitment. Make sure to have lots of failures, and remember that it is really fun. Don’t be afraid.

Do you find that people react in a certain way when you tell them you’re a scientist? Do they make any assumptions?

I find that people assume I’m a rigid, narrow-minded, boring, uncreative person, focused on the immediately practical, with no vision, poetry, or spirit. And they definitely assume it would not be fun to ask me much about what I do.

What do you personally find to be the most rewarding and the most irritating parts of studying science?

I like to sink down into a problem, to really work at it hard and thoroughly, and to come up with a new way of thinking (or to at least slightly change how people understand the questions and the solutions).

I also really like working with a wide variety of people – on research projects, in class, in committees – and finding ways to get to better and more satisfying outcomes – whether in my teaching or in the research we are doing, or in how our scientific and engineering institutions are set up. People don’t realize how wildly social science can be.

The most irritating parts? Hm, here’s a list: boring talks, having to sit in my chair for too long, slow computers, unhealthy boxed lunches, so many airplane flights…

What do you believe is FAS’s greatest strength and how can the organization take advantage of it?

FAS’s greatest strength is its clear and consistent record of focus on science and technology issues of international security. This provides a platform, both for building dialogue with policy makers and for providing opportunities for scientists and engineers to engage with policymakers. FAS could further develop this potential by finding more scientists and engineers, from different locations and institutions, who could use FAS as a bridge to communicate with policy makers and the public.

What are the top issues that FAS should focus on in the next five years?

Nuclear power and nuclear proliferation, globally. I used to work in the area of nuclear arms control, and in that field, the challenges of nuclear proliferation are well understood. Now I work in the energy field, and, strangely, nuclear proliferation is generally seen as “out-of-scope.” Developing an integrated understanding of nuclear energy and nuclear proliferation risks as part of the energy future is something that FAS is very well suited to do.

Energy solutions, globally: New approaches to buildings and transportation for large, system-level efficiencies. New technologies – piezo-electrics, thermo-electrics, energy storage.

Nuclear problems have been and continue to be a challenge that FAS can address comprehensively and with credibility. Energy solutions – as mind-blowingly different as nuclear energy was in the 1930s – are what scientists and engineers are working on now; their potential is what we desperately need to communicate to our policy makers and the public

 Complete this sentence: Science is vital because ...

Science is vital because we are exploring the nature of the universe. It is part of what makes us vital.

The Air Pollutant Optimization Model, described in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides a new approach for reducing the health effects of ozone and fine particulate pollution. By considering health impacts and generating costs together, the hybrid model may provide a new tool for utility companies seeking to meet air quality standards.

In a test case for the state of Georgia, the model suggested that health impacts could have been reduced by $176 million, while increasing generating costs by $84 million.

“We looked at what would be the least expensive way of running these power plants if you take into account both the generating costs and the health impact costs,” said Valerie Thomas, Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering and School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. “You would still be operating plants that emit pollutants, of course, but you would reduce operations at the ones having the greatest impact and increase the use of facilities that have less impact or are in other areas.”

The new approach depends on the use of “reduced form” air quality predictions. Comprehensive air quality models typically require days of computer time to calculate concentrations of pollution for one emissions scenario, but the new format uses only the “sensitivities” derived from the full model to accurately produce predictions in less than a second. This capability would allow utility companies, for the first time, to test many possible scenarios in evaluating how air quality would change with different combinations of generating plant operations.

“This is really all about ‘smart generation,’” said Athanasios Nenes, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. “This shows there’s a way to meet the standards by controlling who emits what and at what time, and that may change the amount of investment you’d need to make in new emission control equipment. Hour-by- hour, we’ll be able to determine what makes the most sense.”

Thomas and Wenman Liu, a PhD student in the School of Public Policy, evaluated a wide range of environmental impacts, including water use, biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, and ecosystem impacts, as well as broader issues regarding land use and sustainability.

In addition to its efforts to reduce its forest fiber footprint, K-C has announced its plan to transition at least 50 percent of wood fiber sourced from natural forests to alternate fiber sources by 2025. This broad, new initiative is expected to help protect biodiversity and reduce the impacts of fiber that the company uses, while ensuring the fiber is sourced in an environmentally and socially responsible way. Equally important, the initiative will also help insulate the company from continuing volatile price fluctuations in the world fiber market.

With a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy, Thomas’ research interests include energy and materials efficiency, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Thomas is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society.

What motivated you to begin cooking on a parabolic stove?

I’ve been cooking with a solar oven for several years now. The solar oven works great, but I wanted to be able do stove-top type cooking, so I got a parabolic stove.

What kinds of things do you cook or not cook on it?

We boil water for tea and coffee. I cook hamburgers, sausages, eggs, and vegetables. Basically it’s exactly like a gas burner on a gas stove.  However, mine is a bit harder to manage than my gas stove. Generally, I end up having the hot spot a bit more on one side rather than exactly in the middle. Also, it is a bit over-focused so to get even cooking I need to swivel the pan back and forth a little. I don’t use it for gentle, slow simmering.

One limitation is that the sun has to be up. Even in the summer, if I wanted to rely on it for morning tea, I would usually have to wait until 10 a.m. or so.

How often do you use the stove?

I only use it about one day a week, on the weekends, because most days I’m not there much before sundown. It would work in the winter, but I don’t use it then because it involves going in and out of the house a lot. I use it like other people use an outdoor grill. It’s a fun way to cook.\

How is cooking on this different/similar to cooking on a regular stove?

Since I’m relying on the sun, I really do have to strike while the iron is hot. Using a solar stove leads me more toward cooking food in the middle of the day, and being mindful of how late it is in the afternoon and how much sun is left.

Describe the process from set up to shut down for cooking one of your favorite recipes.

The first step is to get the stove into the sun and pointed at the right angle. That could involve picking it up and moving it to a sunny spot. Then I tilt the parabola back and forth until the heat is focused on the cooking ring. Once I get the angle to the sun about right, I wave my hand through to feel where the heat is to see if I need to make some adjustments to the angle. Next I put the pan on the cooking ring and look underneath to see exactly where the bright sunny spot is on the bottom of the pan. I continue to make small tilts and turns to get the bright spot to be in the middle of the pan. Then, I proceed as usual. Let’s say I’m making a stir fry.  I’ll pour some oil in the pan, wait a bit, tilt the pan around to cover the bottom of the pan with oil, add some spices, stir a bit with a spatula, add some onions and garlic, add the other ingredients, stir around a bit more, and it’s done. To shut down, I just swivel the parabola a bit to the side.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2013 ISyE Alumni Magazine.

The study was published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology:

For both types of trucks, vehicle efficiency is important from the perspective of energy consumption, GHG emissions, and TCO over the vehicle lifetime. The TTW [tank-to-wheels] efficiency of the truck depends strongly on the drive cycle, and the electric truck is more likely to provide higher benefits with the NYCC-style driving conditions than with the CSHVC or similar conditions. Given the same drive cycle and thus the same vehicle efficiency, the electric truck would be more attractive to fleet operators with high truck utilization (VKT [vehicle kilometers traveled] demand), of course within the electric drive range.

Battery replacement is another key factor; to maximize the benefits from electric trucks, the durability and reliability of the automotive Li-ion battery are crucial, which might be advanced with technological development. Recycling of the EV Li-ion battery could also improve life-cycle energy consumption and GHG emissions. There is also variation by state in the electric truck’s comparative energy consumption and GHG emissions. For the baseline case, recent and projected future generation mixes result in similar or less energy consumption and GHG emissions of the electric truck compared to the diesel truck in most parts of the US.

—Lee et al.

For more information visit http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/07/gatech-20130706.html

Thomas is working with Wenman Liu, a PhD student in the School of Public Policy, to evaluate a wide range of environmental impacts, including water use, biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, and ecosystem impacts, as well as broader issues regarding land use and sustainability.

In addition to its efforts to reduce its forest fiber footprint, K-C has announced its plan to transition at least 50 percent of wood fiber sourced from natural forests to alternate fiber sources by 2025. This broad, new initiative is expected to help protect biodiversity and reduce the impacts of fiber that the company uses, while ensuring the fiber is sourced in an environmentally and socially responsible way. Equally important, the initiative will also help insulate the company from continuing volatile price fluctuations in the world fiber market.

With a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy, Thomas’ research interests include energy and materials efficiency, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Thomas is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society.

This article first appeared in the 2012 edition of the ISyE Alumni Magazine.

Thomas, who is associate professor in the School of Public Policy and is the Anderson Interface Associate Professor of Natural Systems Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, attended the 2012 Congressional Visits Day, along with Georgia Tech's director of federal relations, Robert Knotts.

Thomas met with Representative John Lewis and with staff for Representative Hank Johnson and Senator Saxby Chambliss.  Thomas emphasized the value of research being done at Georgia Tech, as well as, the importance of federal research funding from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy that supports the development of solutions for challenges in energy and creating a more sustainable way of life. She also highlighted her own research on energy options in the southeast.

“Federal support of research is important, both for fundamental research that can provide the basis for future advances, and for progress on national priorities including defense and energy,” said Thomas. She noted the importance of such congressional visits if we are to provide long-term understanding and relationship-building between researchers and policy-makers.

During her visit, Thomas met with Representative John Lewis, as well as with the staff of Representative Hank Johnson and Senator Saxby Chambliss.  She highlighted the importance of federal funding for research, including funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy, as a way to help solve some of our current challenges in energy and to create a more sustainable way of life.   She also spoke about her research on energy options in the southeast.

“Federal support of research is important both for fundamental research, that can provide the basis for future advances, and for progress on national priorities, including defense and energy,” said Thomas.

Congressional visits are imperative if we are to provide long-term understanding and communication between researchers and policy-makers she added.  “We must emphasize the importance of research with members of congress and their staff, to thank them for their ongoing support, and to build long-term relationships.”

Tech joined other top universities—the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, University ofCalifornia-Berkeley, and University of Michigan—in the $500 million AMP push toguide investment in emerging technologies and increase the supply ofhigh-quality manufacturing jobs and overall U.S. global competitiveness.

“We applaud this initiative, and Georgia Tech ishonored to collaborate to identify ways to strengthen the manufacturing sectorto help create jobs in Georgia and across the United States,” Peterson said.“Many of our challenges can be solved through innovation and fostering anentrepreneurial environment, as well as collaboration between industry,education, and government to create a healthy economic environment and aneducated workforce.”

Today, the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial andSystems Engineering (ISyE) leads the way in advanced manufacturing research anddevelopment at Georgia Tech. ISyE faculty specialize in many relateddisciplines, including computer-integrated systems, controls for flexibleautomation, manufacturing systems design, analysis and simulation, leanmanufacturing strategies, and performance measurements.

Advanced manufacturing involves not only new ways tomanufacture existing products, but also new products emerging from advancedtechnologies, observes Stephen E. Cross, Georgia Tech’s executive vicepresident for research. Cross, who is also a professor in ISyE, is working withPresident Peterson to support the AMP.

“ISyE’s competencies in manufacturing, logistics,supply chains, and methodological work in operations research, statistics,simulation, and decision support provide the intellectual core for arenaissance in advanced manufacturing,” Cross said recently. “ISyE’s trackrecord of excellence, combined with equally stellar research throughout therest of the Institute, has made Tech one of the leading research universitiesin the world.”

ISyE Professor Leon McGinnis is supporting bothPeterson and Cross in their work with the AMP Steering Committee. McGinnis isbeing joined by Ben Wang, who in January will assume the role of executivedirector of the Manufacturing Research Center (MaRC) at Georgia Tech and alsobecome a professor in ISyE.

Both educators will serve on a Georgia Tech workinggroup that will focus on ways in which research and education can maximize theimpact of emerging technologies on the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Other ISyE faculty serving the advancedmanufacturing thrust includes Professor Chelsea (Chip) White III, SchneiderNational Chair in Transportation and Logistics, and Harvey Donaldson, associatechair of Industry and International programs. Both are involved in a workshopfocusing on the Council on Competitiveness’s U.S. manufacturing competitivenessinitiative. The meeting, planned for early 2012 at Georgia Tech, will focus onhow the supply chain and logistics industry can best support U.S. manufacturingcompetitiveness.

“Advanced manufacturing can be viewed as a system ofsystems that involves design, processes, equipment, information, energy,materials, and the entire supply chain,” said Wang, who served as director ofthe High-Performance Materials Institute at Florida State University beforecoming to Georgia Tech. “This new kind of manufacturing relies on a highlyeducated workforce and on truly innovative research capable of furnishing thebasis for new companies as well as supporting existing industry—and ISyE isuniquely positioned to supply both the skilled workforce and the innovativeresearch.”

ISyE faculty members conduct some $6.5 million insponsored research annually, in areas that support all facets of manufacturingand industrial systems– optimization, stochastic systems, logistics,simulation, statistics, natural systems, economic decision analysis, andhuman-integrated systems analysis.

Below are instances (in alphabetical order) of thecutting-edge work being performed by ISyE faculty in areas related to advanced manufacturing.

Jane Ammons, who is the H. Milton andCarolyn J. Stewart School Chair and a professor in ISyE, collaborates onreverse production systems with Matthew Realff, a professor in the School ofChemical & Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) and David Wang Sr. Fellow. Formore than ten years, the team has focused on two important areas: the recovery andreuse of carpet wastes and ways to reduce electronic waste (e-waste).

Ammons, Realff, and their team have developed amathematical framework to support the growth of used-carpet collectionnetworks. Such networks could help to recycle much of the nation’s annualcarpet waste total of 4.7 billion pounds. The successful reuse of that carpethas a potential value of $2.8 billion, versus a cost of $100 million to sendthe waste to landfills.

In other work, the team is studying the problem ofe-waste—unwanted electronic components such as televisions, monitors, andcomputer boards and chips. The e-waste stream includes multiple hazardousmaterials containing lead and other toxins, yet effective management and reuseof e-components can be profitable. Ammons and Realff have devised mathematicalmodels that address the complexities of e-waste processing, with the goal ofhelping recycling companies stay economically viable.

“Working with both, companies and government, ourgoal is to eliminate as much product disposal in landfills as possible,” Ammonssaid. “By extending our work to address new operational control andinfrastructure design problems, we can help to address uncertainty andvariability in closed-loop supply chain flows on a global scale.”

 AssociateProfessor Nagi Gebraeel conductsresearch in the area of detecting and preventing failure in engineering systemsas they degrade over time. The goal is to avoid both expensive downtime andunnecessary maintenance costs.

“We could be talking about a fleet of airlines,trucks, trains, ships—or a manufacturing system,” Gebraeel said. “In any ofthese cases, it’s extremely useful for a number of reasons to be able toaccurately estimate the remaining useful lifetime of the system or its components.”

In one project, Gebraeel and his team worked withRockwell Collins—a Cedar Rapid, Iowa, maker of avionics and electronics—tomonitor and diagnose the performance of circuit boards that control vitalaircraft communication systems.

Since the exact time of component failure isunknown, airlines are forced to anticipate when replacements are needed.Scheduled maintenance can result in replacement of parts that still have usablelife. Using circuit boards until parts actually fail will result in unplannedand expensive downtime.

As Gebraeel methodically exposes an avionicscomponent to heat and vibration, he employs a network of computers and sensorsto record and analyze data on the degradation rate of the part he is testing.If he can reliably predict the failure rate of a component, he can helpairlines replace parts at the most cost-effective time.

In another effort, Gebraeel has developed anadaptive prognostics system (APS), a custom research tool that allows him toinvestigate how quickly components degrade under vibration and other stresses.Gebraeel and his team can use APS to test a complex system—such as a gearbox—byusing multiple sensors in a triangulated pattern to detect the frequencysignals coming from individual components.

Gebraeel is currently in talks with a major airlineto use APS to analyze critical engine components. The aim is to be able topredict engine wear rates in ways that will help optimize aircraft maintenanceprocedures.

“There’s a real need for information about the remaininglife of components, so that users can find the economical middle ground betweenthe cost of scheduled replacements and the cost of failure,” he said. “Think ofthe everyday problem of whether we really need to replace vehicle engine oil at3,000 miles. If we replace it early, we sacrifice some useful time, but if wereplace it later, we risk engine damage. It’s very useful to have detailedinformation about degradation in a system over time.”

ProfessorLeon McGinnis focuses on model-basedsystems engineering, an approach that uses cutting-edge computational methodsto enable capture and reuse of systems knowledge among multiple stakeholders. McGinnis,his team, and other faculty collaborators are pursuing several sponsoredprojects in this area.

In one notable project, McGinnis and his team areworking with Rockwell Collins, the Iowa-based maker of avionics andelectronics. The aim is to help the corporation speed transition of newproducts by automating the process that simulates physical manufacturing.

In order to optimize the resources needed to makeproducts at the required rate, McGinnis explains, Rockwell Collins creates acomputerized simulation model of the manufacturing processes. Development ofsimulation models has traditionally been the province of experts who areskilled in using initial system designs to simulate the demands of actualproduction.

“This is not a trivial task—producing a simulationmodel requires some 100 to 200 hours per product,” said McGinnis, who holds theEugene C. Gwaltney Chair in Manufacturing Systems. “Due to expert resourcelimitations, the company was only able to generate a few production models at atime, which created something of a bottleneck.”

To analyze the model-development process, an ISyEteam interviewed Rockwell Collins engineers on the methods they used to developa simulation model. The Georgia Tech investigators carefully analyzed the stepsand methods that the engineers used to progress from an original system designto a simulation model.

Then the ISyE researchers turned to SysML, alanguage that enables the computerized modeling of complex systems. SysML letsdesigners delineate a new product—and multiple related factors such as people,machinery, and product flows—in a standardized way.

By describing the evolution of a given product usingSysML, McGinnis and his team were able to automate the movement of that productfrom design to simulation. Even more importantly, the ISyE team created adomain-specific version of SysML that was customized to the Rockwell Collinsenvironment. That achievement allowed any of the company’s new products andsystems to be plugged into an SysML-based automation process.

This new way to doing things appears to reduce thetime required to build simulation models by an order of magnitude McGinnissaid. It also allows multiple products to be developed concurrently andencourages “what-if” studies that couldn’t be performed before.

“Essentially, this technology lets the people whoown a process validate it without the middleman—the simulation expert,” hesaid. “There’s a two-part philosophy here—one is to articulate the system in away that all the stakeholders can agree on, and then to automate the bringingof information and knowledge to the stakeholders without requiring mediation byexperts.”

McGinnis is also working on several other projects.In one effort, he is collaborating with the School of Mechanical Engineeringand the Manufacturing Research Center (MaRC) to develop semantics formanufacturing processes under a DARPA contract. In another project, he iscollaborating with the Tennenbaum Institute to address the challenges ofidentifying and mitigating risks in global manufacturing enterprise networks.In other MaRC research, he is investigating the integration of product designand manufacturing management of flexibly automated production throughout anentire manufacturing system.

SpiridonReveliotis, an ISyE professor, is currently involved in aproject that addresses a cutting-edge approach to automation in manufacturing.This concept, known as flexible automation, involves variable-size batchproduction and the ability to reconfigure and rebalance the shop floor quicklyto accommodate differing product mixes.

To date, Reveliotis explains, flexible automationhas been most successful at the level of single manufacturing processes. Toaddress this limitation, he is developing the analytical capability andcomputational tools to enable effective deployment and in the methodologicalareas that define the technical bases for these works.

Reveliotis is using the representation of a ResourceAllocation System—an enriched version of a queuing network model—and alsoemploying modeling and analytical capabilities derived from modern controltheory, computer science, and operations research.

Using these, he is seeking to build a framework andmethodology to enable rapid reconfiguration of automated production systems,with control logic capable of managing the system operation in each newconfiguration. One challenge, he said, involves managing the trade-offs betweenthe quest for a high-fidelity model of the underlying shop floor dynamics andthe need to keep the control logic and its deployment manageable.

In another project, Reveliotis is developing methodsto help remanufacturing facilities approach component-disassembly tasks in themost efficient ways. This work, sponsored by the National Science Foundation,uses a learning-based approach comprised of efficient sampling techniques andnovel machine-learning algorithms to determine the optimal disassembly plan foreach product type.

Beyond addressing important practical problems inthe manufacturing and remanufacturing domains, both of the above lines of workare also contributing seminal analytical results enterprise development for theaerospace industry.

ProfessorJianjun (Jan) Shi’s researchaddresses system informatics and control. He uses his training in bothmechanical and electrical engineering to integrate system data—comprised ofdesign, manufacturing, automation, and performance information—into models thatseek to reduce process variability.

Shi, who holds the Carolyn J. Stewart Chair in ISyE,is currently working on several sponsored projects. In one effort, Shi isworking with nGimat, a Norcross, Georgia-based company that was a 1997 graduateof the Advanced Technology Development Center startup-company incubator atGeorgia Tech.

nGimat is currently addressing the challenge ofmass-producing a type of nanopowder for use in high-energy, high-densitybatteries for electric cars. With sponsorship from the Department of Energy(DoE), Shi is supporting nGimat as it works to increase its output of thisnanopowder by several orders of magnitude.

“This nanopowder product has very goodcharacteristics, and the task here is to scale-up production while maintainingthe quality,” Shi said. “We must identify the parameters— what to monitor, whatto control—to reduce any variability and do so in an environmentally friendlyway.”

In work focusing on the steel industry, Shi is pursuingmultiple projects including investigating sensing technologies used to monitorvery high temperature environments used in steel manufacturing. With DoEsupport, he is working with OG technologies to develop methods that employoptical sensors capable of providing continuous high-speed images of very hotsurfaces—in the area of 1,000 to 1,450 degrees Celsius.

In steel manufacturing, Shi explains, continuouscasting and rolling lines can be miles long and production can take hours.Variations in the process temperature—currently difficult to detect—can lead tocostly quality problems, increased labor costs, and increased carbon dioxideemissions due to wasted energy.

“We want to catch defect formation in the very earlystage of manufacturing,” Shi said. “By using imaging data of the producteffectively with other process data to eliminate defects, we can help optimizethe casting process.”

In another representative project, Shi isinvestigating ways to use process measurements and online adjustments toimprove quality control in the manufacturing of the ubiquitous silicon wafersused in semiconductor electronics. In work sponsored by the National ScienceFoundation, he is working with several manufacturers to examine the root causesof undesirable geometric defects in wafer surfaces.

Shi explains that the first step of his approachinvolves developing a software model capable of detecting and accuratelycharacterizing surface characteristics on a silicon wafer. If waves arepresent, the model must be able to capture both their mean profile as well asdetect and characterize particular types of waves.

The second step requires using this model to judgewhether an actual wafer surface is of acceptable quality. If the surface isfaulty, the model returns data on what must be done to improve it.

“Wafer manufacturing is another instance of acontinuous process where, if you catch imperfections early, you can quickly andcost-effectively return to a previous step in the process and correct theproblem,” Shi said.

AssociateProfessor Joel Sokol, A. RussellChandler III Chair and Professor GeorgeNemhauser, and Professor ShabbirAhmed recently completed a project supporting a major float glassmanufacturer. The company was automating a process where finished glass platesare removed from the production line and packed for shipment.

The company was concerned that the new machines thatpick up and remove glass from the production line might fall behind, allowingvaluable plates to be heavily damaged. What was critically needed was thecapability to carefully schedule the sequence of production so the machinescould function at maximum capacity with as little waste as possible.

The ISyE team tackled development of new softwarethat could minimize production scheduling problems. They devised algorithmsthat allowed the machines to work at their maximum efficiency and enabled themto handle input data with more than 99 percent efficiency.

“The algorithms we delivered can also be usedstrategically to determine how many machines of each type should be installedon a production line,” Sokol said.

In another project, Sokol,  Nemhauser, and Ahmed are collaborating on aproject for Korea-based Samsung. The aim is to support production throughput ata Samsung semiconductor- manufacturing facility.

The challenge involves the physical movement ofsemiconductors from one processing station to another throughout the factory.Because the routing of semiconductors between processing machines can differfrom item to item, there’s no linear assembly- line type of procedure; instead,hundreds of automated vehicles pick up an item from one processing point andmove it to its next step.

Because of the facility’s structure, these automatedvehicles encounter congestion that can delay the production schedule, Nemhausersaid. The ISyE team is developing ways to best route and schedule the vehiclesto minimize congestion and move items between machines in ways that don’t delayproduction.

“This is clearly a highly complex challenge thatwill require development of an accurate system model,” added Ahmed. “But it’sexactly the type of problem that can be solved by devising effective softwareand hardware modifications.”

Valerie Thomas, Anderson Interfaceassociate professor of Natural Systems in ISyE, is conducting research on theuse of information technology, mediated by bar codes or radio frequency (RFID)tags, to improve recycling and end-of-life management for electronics and otherproducts.

This work has been presented to the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Congress and has been featured inthe New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

In another area, Thomas is collaborating withProfessors Matthew Realff and Ron Chance in the School of Chemical &Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) and with ISyE PhD students Dexin Luo and DongGu Choi on the design, energy efficiency, water management, and carbonfootprint for facilities to produce biofuels. This work is supported by AlgenolBiofuels as part of their $25 million DoE-funded pilot plant for the productionof ethanol from cyanobacteria.

AssociateProfessor Chen Zhou, associate chairfor undergraduate studies, and Professor Leon McGinnis tackled sustainabilityissues for Ford Motor Company in a recent project.

The issue involved shipping gearbox components fromChina to the United States in ways that would minimize not only cost butgreenhouse gas emissions and waste.

It turned out that packaging was at the heart of theissue. The researchers had to configure component packaging so that the maximumnumber of components could be placed in a cargo container yet also allow foroptimal recycling of the packing materials to avoid waste and unnecessary cost.

“This was definitely a complex problem,” Zhou said.“You must track every piece of packaging from its source to its final restingplace, when it either goes into another product or into a landfill.”

The team created amodel—a globally sourced auto parts packaging system— that optimized cargocontainer space. The model also enabled the use of packing materials that werefully reusable; some materials were sent back to China for use in futureshipments, while the rest was recycled into plastics that became part of newvehicles.

Two presenters,one from Georgia Tech and the other from US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)in Washington DC, joined the Wellington event by videoconference to discuss anew approach to tackling the global e-waste problem.

Dr Valerie Thomasis the Anderson Interface Associate Professor of Natural Systems in the StewartSchool of Industrial and Systems Engineering with a jointappointment in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech.  She has been researching the concept of SmartTrash for a number of years and believes that the time is right for electronicproducts to take ‘self responsibility’. “Product stewardship encourages suppliers to take responsibility fortheir own products at end of life, but I believe we can go even further and getthe products to take more responsibility for themselves,” she said.   “The secret is to attach the UniversalProduct Code (UPC) barcode or RFID (radio frequency identification) tag to the productitself, as opposed to the packaging which is typically discarded as soon as theproduct is installed.”  She cited asuccessful application with mobile phones in Europe where the data in thebarcode recorded full details of the materials used in manufacture, reducingcosts when the phones are sent for recycling.

Dr Thomas pointedout the costs of applying RFID tags at the point of manufacture have dropped toas low as US 5 cents, so there is no cost barrier to widespread implementation,even on low value items. “Once implemented, lots of new options becomeavailable for efficiently managing the re-use, refurbishment or recycling ofthe products,” she said. “But most importantly, it will make the disposal ofelectronic trash easy for the end consumer and even open up the possibility ofa cash return.  With cash incentives anduser-friendliness, consumers are much more likely to start disposing of theirelectronic waste in a responsible and environment-friendly manner.”

Angie Leith fromEPA provided the background to the development of RFID as a possible technologyfor tracking electronic products at end of life as well as for the distributionof new products to retailers.  “Westarted studying RFID technologies in 2002 to help us understand any possiblenegative effects on the environment, but now see them as a possible tool formanaging waste streams and increasing the levels of recycling.  In the USA in 2009, only 15% of theelectronic equipment entering the waste stream was recycled and our goal is to achieve recycling rates much closer tothe national average for other materials (33%), or even higher,” she said.

“Twenty-fivepercent of the states in America now have legislation covering e-waste, withmany banning electronic waste in landfills. We are relying on technology innovations such as RFID to help usimplement better e-waste solutions on a nationwide basis,” Ms Leith said.   But she did point out that this will rely oncomputer companies attaching RFID tags to their products at the point ofmanufacture. “While we will do everything we can to encourage this, we do notenvisage a legislative solution at this stage,” she concluded.

“Efficient andconvenient collection and disposal systems are critical for successful e-wasterecycling, but it is important that the mechanisms are also in place totransport the recovered materials into new manufacturing processes,” saidLaurence Zwimpfer, Chair of the eDay New Zealand Trust, and MC for the SmartTrash discussion. “This presents a special challenge for New Zealand, becauseof our geographic isolation from the main manufacturing nations in Asia andEurope.  We still have to pay to getextracted materials to these markets.  Wefind the Smart Trash approach very interesting and will certainly encouragemanufacturers to start tagging their products, but we believe there will stillbe a net cost to achieve sustainable e-waste recycling in New Zealand.  We will continue to press for productstewardship schemes to be put in place in New Zealand with supportinggovernment regulations to ensure all suppliers participate equitably incovering these costs,” he said.

The eDay NewZealand Trust was formed in 2010 to focus on the development of sustainablesolutions for the recycling of electronic waste in New Zealand and the Pacific.  It took over running the annual eDay, freee-waste recycling event in New Zealand, which in 2010 saw nearly 20,000 carsdropping off over 80,000 items of electronic waste, filling over 160 20’shipping containers. 

The Public AffairsSection of the Embassy of the United States of America arranges videoconferencepresentations from time to time on matters of public interest.

AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society, and the election asa Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. 

Thomas, who also holds a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy inthe Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, was honored “for sustained commitmentto combining science policy with innovative interdisciplinary research inindustrial ecology.”

Giddens, a biomedical engineering professor in the Coulter Department, washonored “for significant contributions to our understanding of the role ofhemodynamics in cardiovascular pathobiology and for leadership of engineeringeducation nationally.”

In addition to Thomas and Giddens, three of the six new Fellows at GeorgiaTech also hail from the College of Engineering; one is on the faculty in theCollege of Sciences’ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. They include thefollowing:

Gilda A. Barabino, associate chair for graduate studies andprofessor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering atGeorgia Tech and Emory, who was honored “for distinguished contributions totissue engineering research and education, as well as for enhancing theparticipation of underrepresented groups in scientific fields.”

Stephen P. DeWeerth, professor of biomedical engineering atthe Coulter Department, who earned the distinction “for contributions in thefield of neuroengineering, particularly for the real-time modeling ofsensorimotor systems and for the development of neural interfacing technology.”

Joseph W. Perry, professor of physical, polymer andmaterials chemistry and optical science, who was honored “for distinguishedcontribution to the understanding, development and application of organicmaterials for third-order nonlinear optics.”

Zhuomin Zhang, professor of mechanical engineering, who wasawarded the Fellow distinction “for advancing thermal radiation research andits applications in temperature measurement, promoting education in nano- andmicro-scale heat transfer and serving professional societies.”

New Fellows will be honored at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the upcoming 2011AAAS Annual Meeting to be held on February 19^, 2011, in Washington,D.C.

The advantages of electric versus diesel depend largely on how the trucks will be used – the frequency of stops and average speeds – and the source of electricity for charging batteries. In city driving with frequent stops, the electric trucks clearly outperform diesel vehicles.

“On average in the United States, electric urban delivery trucks use about 30 percent less total energy and emit about 40 percent less greenhouse gases than diesel trucks, for about the same total cost, taking into account both the purchase price and the operating costs,” said Dong-Yeon Lee, a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “However, costs and emissions depend on how and where the truck will be used.”

In urban delivery routes with lots of stop-and-start driving, electric trucks are roughly 50 percent more efficient to operate than diesel trucks overall. That makes them at least 20 percent less expensive than diesel-fueled trucks, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 50 percent. Where they are frequently stopped and started, the higher efficiency of the electric motor at low speeds and the regenerative braking systems in electrical vehicles help provide better efficiency.

However, electric delivery trucks lose their advantage in suburban routes that involve fewer stops and higher average speed. Electric vehicles have a limited daily range and top speed, and without a lot of stops, lose their regenerative braking advantage. Electric vehicles can cost more than their diesel counterparts under certain conditions, particularly if high-cost charging systems are used, if the battery must be replaced early, or if they are used mainly for highway driving.

The relative benefits of the electric vehicles, the researchers found, depend on vehicle efficiency associated with drive cycle, diesel fuel price, travel demand, electric drive battery replacement and price, electricity generation and transmission efficiency, electric truck recharging infrastructure and purchase price. The study findings were reported July 16, 2013, in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

The research team took into account the sources of electricity used to charge the electric vehicles in evaluating greenhouse gas emissions. Electricity produced from hydroelectric sources – more common in the northwest United States – dramatically reduced total greenhouse gas emissions for electric vehicles operated there.  Vehicles operated in states heavily dependent on coal for producing electricity showed higher emissions.

In every state in the U.S., electric trucks provided some reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, with urban routes providing the most advantage. In about half of the states, the electric trucks cut greenhouse gas emissions by a third or more compared to diesel vehicles.

Wild cards in the study included the future costs of both diesel fuel and electricity, and the potential cost of replacing an electric truck’s battery pack if it has a shorter-than-expected lifetime. Lithium-ion battery packs are expected to last the lifetime of the trucks, as much as 150,000 miles for the drive cycles tested.

“Technology advances make predicting the long-term price of electric trucks difficult,” said Valerie Thomas, one of the study’s co-authors and a professor in Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and School of Public Policy. “Battery price reductions down the road could have a large effect on the cost-competitiveness of electric trucks, while only diesel fuel prices could have a similarly large effect on the future cost-competitiveness of diesel trucks.”

The researchers decided to study electric trucks in urban delivery applications because vehicles in these applications tend to travel the same routes each day, spend significant amounts of time in stop-and-start operation, and return at the end of each day to a central location where they can be charged.

The comparison involved a 2011 Smith Newton electric truck powered by a 120 kW electric motor, and a 2006 Freightliner truck powered by a Cummins diesel engine. The two trucks had approximately the same gross vehicle weight, curb weight and payload. The comparison controlled for improvements in diesel efficiency between 2006 and 2011.

The researchers were surprised to find that the electric truck had cost advantages over the diesel vehicle under some conditions. They had expected that costs would always be higher for the electric vehicle, especially since the purchase price of the electric truck studied was higher than the diesel truck – and other models of electric trucks would have larger cost differentials.

“Over the life of the truck, there are many situations in which the total cost of operating an electric vehicle is less than operating a diesel vehicle,” noted Marilyn Brown, another co-author and a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy. “Our expectation was that the electric vehicle would provide environmental benefits, but at a cost. We found that particularly in urban settings and in locations with relatively low greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, electric delivery trucks both save money and have environmental benefits.”

Depending on what happens with vehicle and fuel costs, the advantages could swing even farther in the direction of electric vehicles.

“The relative benefit of electric trucks over diesel counterparts could be much more significant than one might expect,” said Lee. “If the electric truck is deployed in the right drive or duty cycle application, fleet operators could enjoy higher returns on investment, while saving energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

CITATION: Dong-Yeon Lee, Valerie M. Thomas and Marilyn A. Brown, “Electric Urban Delivery Trucks: Energy Use, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Cost Effectiveness” (Environmental Science and Technology, 47 (14): 8022-8030, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es400179w

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 Factors like cost and consumer appeal affect most decisionsabout making and buying products.  Industrial ecology introduces anotherperspective. A bag of potato chips, according to Thomas, involves decisionsabout growing potatoes, the materials to make the bag, and where the waste fromthe potatoes and bag goes.  She clarified, "Consumption andproduction affect not just the immediate use of products but have a past and afuture.  Products do not appear out of nothing and they do not disappearwhen we throw them away."

>> Read more:.

Thomas, Wang, and Borin worked with the Office of Sustainability of the City of Atlanta and Sustainable Atlanta to evaluate the total greenhouse gas emissions from the operations of the City of Atlanta government. This includes City electricity and natural gas use, transportation fuel use by City vehicles, as well as emissions of other greenhouse gases.

"The City of Atlanta's greenhouse gas emissions in 2007 came to 540 thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is equivalent to emissions from the household energy use of about 150,000 people or the annual energy use of about 100,000 passenger vehicles,* said Valerie Thomas, Anderson Interface Associate Professor at the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems at Georgia Tech and primary author of the report. "Having conducted an inventory and committed to reducing emissions makes the City of Atlanta a leader in the state and region and well ahead of federal action on climate change.*

"We know that the opportunities to reduce our emissions are great, particularly now with the federal administration's focus on green job creation and green energy,* said Mayor Franklin. "With funding from the recently-passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Atlanta's sustainability efforts will focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives which will create jobs, save money and protect our environment,* she said.

Determining Atlanta city government's carbon footprint coincides with the release of the inaugural sustainability report for Atlanta. Produced by Sustainable Atlanta (a non-governmental partner to the city's Office of Sustainability), the report compiles readily available data to create benchmarks for measuring Atlanta's sustainability efforts, including the city's carbon footprint. The report * available at www.sustainableatlanta.org * also provides best practices, context, proposed strategies and action in the areas of water; energy and climate change; parks and greenspace; and recycling and materials management.

"The Sustainability Report for Atlanta is both a map and milepost,* said Lynnette Young, executive director of Sustainable Atlanta. "It is a snapshot of Atlanta's current status as it relates to sustainability and a context for future measurement and opportunity, determining what we can do together to help the city advance sustainable lifestyles for everyone.*

Launched in 2008 with support from the Kendeda Fund, the Atlanta Office of Sustainability is working across city departments to "green* operations and at the same time, maximize efficiencies. Sustainable practices implemented at City Hall are already generating a 20 percent drop in electricity use, with a forecast of nearly $135,000 in annual operations cost savings.

With the municipal carbon footprint established, the next step will be to develop the Atlanta Climate Action Plan. "The Climate Action Plan will be our blueprint to guide all city departments so that current initiatives and near-term objectives are aligned with achieving the 2012 emissions reduction goal," said Mandy Schmitt, Atlanta's Director of Sustainability. "This strategic effort to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions supports the ultimate goal of making Atlanta a community that lives within the self-perpetuating limits of its environment, while maintaining high standards for economic growth, environmental integrity, and social justice."

According to Schmitt, near-term goals for Atlanta city government to achieve by the end of 2009 include:
1. 10 percent drop in energy use in general fund* facilities through low/no-cost conservation measures yielding $300,000 to $500,000 in annual savings
2. Five percent drop in water use in general fund facilities
3. At least two renewable energy demonstration projects
4. Three percent drop in fossil fuels used by municipal fleet yielding $267,000 in annual savings
5. 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in general fund facilities

Atlanta's greenhouse gas inventory was guided by a protocol developed by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. Atlanta is one of more than 1,057 cities, towns and counties worldwide that are members of ICLEI and that have made a commitment to sustainable development. Atlanta also hosts ICLEI's Southeast Regional Office, and city staff shares office space with ICLEI representatives to maximize the organization's resources in developing performance-based, results-oriented campaigns and programs.

*General fund facilities do not include facilities in Enterprise Fund Departments, such as Watershed and Airport, whose funds come directly from user fees.

In an effort to craft legislation to reduce the environmental impact of electronics, and to support the incorporation of environmental considerations in engineering curricula, the Science and Technology Committee sought testimony from five witnesses regarding the draft legislation entitled "The Electronic Waste Research and Development Act of 2009.*

According to Thomas, "Today, recycling programs for electronics and other consumer products have low recycling rates both because collection programs are difficult for consumers to use and because the products are difficult to recycle. To achieve high recycling rates, products need to be designed for recycling, and collection programs need to be designed to be very easy, almost automatic, regardless of the complexity of the product. Currently, consumers are mainly responsible for managing the recycling or disposal of their products. In some locations there have been efforts to make producers responsible for managing the recycling or disposal of their products. A third approach might work better: improve both product design and collection systems so that products can increasing manage their own entry into the collection and recycling system. Rather than having to continue to work so hard to educate consumers about how to recycle each and every one of their purchases, consumer products could, almost, manage themselves (Saar and Thomas 2002; Thomas 2003).*

Thomas and the other witnesses discussed innovative ways to deal with electronic waste and how research and development can help address the challenge of managing the disposal of electronic products in the United States.

Five witnesses, representing perspectives from academia, a non-profit electronics producer, and electronics recyclers, offered testimony. They included:

Dr. Valerie Thomas, Anderson Interface Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and School of Public Policy. Dr. Thomas discussed her research on innovative methods to manage electronic waste and the challenges facing the recycling and re-use of electronic products.

Read Dr. Thomas' testimony: http://www.isye.gatech.edu/thomastestimony

Video of hearing (click on webcast):
http://science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2348

Dr. Paul Anastas, Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment and Director, Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, Yale University, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Dr. Anastas discussed the applicability of research in green chemistry and engineering to the electronics sector.

Mr. Philip J. Bond, President, Information Technology Association of America.
Mr. Bond discussed ways in which innovation through R&D could help electronics manufacturers address the challenge of electronic waste. He will also give his views on promoting collaboration between industry and non-industry researchers to encourage the transfer of successful research into products.

Mr. Jeff Omelchuck, Executive Director, Green Electronics Council, Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT). Mr. Omelchuck discussed the development and utility of EPEAT, challenges to making existing electronic products more environmentally friendly, and ways in which R&D could address these challenges.

Mr. Willie Cade, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, PC Rebuilders and Recyclers, Home of the Computers for Schools Program. Mr. Cade discussed the challenges faced by electronic refurbishes and recyclers, as well as ways to promote collaboration between academic researchers and the recycling and refurbishing business.

Minnesota artist and educator Susan Armington recently visited Atlanta to work on a project with her longtime friend, Industrial and Systems Engineering Associate Professor Valerie Thomas. Armington, a roster artist of the Minnesota State Arts Board, directs the Talking Suitcases project, which is billed as an arts-based process for exploring questions and processes. She primarily uses the project in education and community building, exploring topics such as immigration, racism, grief and other "life-transitional" issues.

"[The works] are suitcases filled with hand-made objects that tell a story." While visiting Atlanta and Georgia Tech, she and Thomas collaborated on a suitcase that tells the lifecycle of sugar, from the ground to the refinery. The duo is working together to tell the story of 40 grams of sugar, the USDA's recommended daily limit.

"We calculated how much of each item it takes to produce this amount of sugar," Armington said. Items used in the project "Sugar: Lifecycle Inventory in a Box," include a 10-inch square representing the land area of ground required to produce 40 grams of sugar, the sugarcane fiber that is used to power the sugar factory, some water, some diesel fuel, a small amount of coal, etc. "The project breaks it down to the basic ingredients for that small amount of sugar."

This particular project, "Making Concepts Visible," was precipitated by Thomas' research with University of Johannesburg Professor Charles Mbohwa and graduate student Livison Mashoko, under a grant from the South African National Research Foundation on the environmental impacts of renewable fuel options in South Africa.

"Sugarcane is a promising biofuel feedstock for southern Africa, and our first research step has been to evaluate the environmental impacts of the current sugar-production systems in South Africa.. While their work and research are rooted in sustainability, it's not just about the carbon footprint, Thomas says. They also can show ways to improve the process.

Thomas says that research into the lifecycles of products typically breaks the processes down to their basic components, detailing every step in their creation. "I do this all the time, checking the numbers," she said. "Our work is justified not only by having intellectual merit, in advancing the science, but also by having broader impact for society.. With [this project], we can take this research to local high schools. The artistic aspect translates the work to show the broader impact."

As a companion piece, Armington wanted to also illustrate not only ingredients used in the front-end creation, but also the connections and relationships created by the sugar business. "It takes 34 people buying sugar to pay [daily wages] for one South African worker."

Armington says her idea is to create objects that make visible the relationship between parts of the lifecycle, to aid people in reflecting on it. The objects are designed to help everyone, not just scientists, to see better what's going on. "It's not good, it's not bad. You can draw your own conclusions."

For her process, Armington creates prototypes before delving into the full project. "[Valerie and I] work on stuff together," said Armington, who attended graduate school at Cornell with Thomas. "I'll take what I've completed, and leave some of it to be used by her. I'm always looking to work in places I haven't been yet," Armington said. "I like to grow; I like to collaborate and work with people in other cultures and disciplines."

"It was nice that she cared to listen to my ideas," said Thomas, who shares a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy.

Armington said this project has opened up other "lifecycle inventories" in her mind. "I would love to have a project on the lifecycle of petroleum," she said. "Once you start to do these things, you want to keep looking into other items." Her new work, inspired by explorations with Thomas, will be part of the upcoming show, "Art Explores Science," May 2010 at the Phipps Center for the Arts, in Hudson, Wisconsin.