| Details: |
The sustainability challenges in the field of chemicals and materials is increasingly becoming complex and multi-dimensional encompassing not only the core chemical or material but also the manufacturing process, regulatory environment, demands of a circular economy which includes the entire supply chain from the raw materials (upstream) to the consumer (downstream), safety, emissions, water, energy and carbon budget as well as the intrinsic safety of the chemical or material to humans, wild life and aquatic organisms. The existing cost structure of the chemicals / materials industry poses an immense barrier to accomplish the sustainability goals as it struggles to address these manifold challenges in a meaningful way. The increasing need for stakeholder communications has also given rise to much hype in an attempt to convince the citizens that everything is well and that minor issues, if any, will be addressed quickly by the innovation agenda of the scientific and technical community.
In this lecture I will address the complexity of the issues, challenges in meeting the sustainability expectations of the stakeholders and the need for a systems approach to redesign processes for improved sustainability. I will also allude to some recent headlines which tend to exaggerate the benefits of some solutions. Unsupported by evidence such statements are detrimental to the credibility of the scientific community which is already reeling under a crisis of confidence amongst its stakeholders. The complexity of the challenge is evident from the fact that in spite of numerous solutions in the published literature, very few of them has been adapted in industrial practice. The lecture will analyze these challenges and define issues that need to be carefully assessed and addressed before chemistry becomes truly green, safe and sustainable. There is also a need to introspect on the limits to which the existing legacy processes can be retrofitted to meet sustainability goals and where there is a need to redesign processes “bottoms-up” with a fresh set of sustainability goals and within the price the customer is willing to pay for the given product.
The issues are complex and the journey difficult; but there is little choice. Merely tinkering will not help. There is a need for deep seated changes in the way we think and do; otherwise the discipline of chemistry as we know today and the industry spawned by this science faces existential threats. |