AVS2003 Session AT-ThM: Development and Implementation of Sustainable Processes

Thursday, November 6, 2003 9:00 AM in Room 320

Thursday Morning

Start	Invited?	Item
9:00 AM	Invited	AT-ThM-3 Development and Implementation of Green Processes for Manufacturing D.A. Dornfeld, N. Krishnan (University of California, Berkeley) Environmental and health issues associated with manufacturing (specially semiconductor manufacturing) are growing in importance and offer strong incentives to reduce resource use and minimize waste. The large flows of materials and energy throughout the economy lead to a wide range of upstream environmental impacts. A strategy for a comprehensive design for environment (DFE) tool to assess the environmental and health impacts of semiconductor manufacturing and to feed this information back into semiconductor equipment and process development cycles is presented. This work builds upon previous research at Berkeley such as environmental value analysis system (EnV-S). A comprehensive approach including (i) scope considering upstream life cycle impacts and facilitating integration into downstream environmental assessments and (ii) metrics supporting a wide range of local and global environmental and health metrics, is proposed. Ideally, feedback loops from DFE tools can inform designers of equipment and processes and aid environmental decision making by regulators, industry suppliers, utilities, etc. A further goal is to promote the broader use of this tool to support industrial ecology. The tool can also have a strong educational component if used in a classroom environment to support the teaching of environmentally conscious manufacturing and industrial ecology. There are several significant intellectual hurdles: what level of detail is required, how can we link upstream life cycle impacts and facilitate downstream environmental assessments of electronics, what local and global environmental metrics are needed (e.g. for health hazard issues), and can the tool be an effective policy planning instrument? The paper will address these issues based on our experience so far with a much reduced scope of effort in EnV-S. The results of this work should establish the feasibility of real, effective design and manufacturing for reduced environmental impact.
9:40 AM		AT-ThM-5 Environmental Accounting of Air Biofiltration using an Energy-based Life-cycle Assessment Approach D.R. Tilley, P. Ganeshan (University of Maryland, College Park) Biofilters are shown to remove gaseous pollutants such as volatile organic compounds, hydrogen sulfide, nitric oxide and carbon monoxide from industrial waste emissions. Biofiltration integrates one of nature's most free services into a sustainable technology that has environmental advantages not shared with competitive technologies. To account for the free services of nature used in biofiltration, life-cycle assessment (LCA) was integrated with the solar emergy methodology (emergy is the total amount of energy of one form required directly and indirectly to make a product or provide a service). Our evaluation demonstrates the ability of emergy-based LCA to quantify, and place into perspective, the importance of natural processes in ameliorating industrial wastes. It also quantifies the life-cycle advantages that biofiltration possesses over other treatment technologies.
10:00 AM		AT-ThM-6 Living Machines Out of Control: Experiments in Autonomous Ecological Engineering P. Kangas, D. Blersch, D. Callahan, M. Walsh (University of Maryland) Ecological engineering is a new field that utilizes ecosystems for environmental problem-solving. One application of ecological engineering has been termed living machines because of the close coupling of ecosystem with its technological interface. Most living machine designs have been multipurpose, aquatic systems with an emphasis on wastewater treatment. In this presentation experiments for making living machines autonomous, or self controlling, are described. Three working prototypes are presented to illustrate the path towards living machine autonomy. First, a solar-powered, floating system that improves water quality of a pond or lagoon is described. Second, a wetland soil microcosm that alternatively feeds itself carbon or nitrogen based on a redox sensor is described. Third, a home-scale wastewater treatment and recycling system that is interfaced through the internet is described. These kinds of systems with increasing degrees of autonomy represent a new approach to bioremediation where by living machines work on environmental improvement tasks independently of direct human control. These systems can be thought of as being "out of control" (in the same way as Rodney Brooks' new generation of robots), because they are designed to have their own independent agendas and power sources. Future directions in autonomous living machines are discussed for wastewater treatment and for other biologically-based processes.
10:20 AM		AT-ThM-7 Enhanced Safety, Reliability and Cost Control with Integrated Gas Control Packages N.A. Downie (Air Products and Chemicals, UK); J.J. Hart (Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.); J. Irven (Air Products and Chemicals, UK); R.E. Parise, R.M. Pearlstein, J. VanOmmeren (Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.) The high-pressure gas cylinder is a reliable package for containing and transporting a wide variety of specialty gases used in semiconductor processing operations. These packages are typically used in gas cabinets that feed the delivery lines leading to the point of use. We found it to be advantageous to move some of the functions that control the pressure, flow and purity of the gas away from the gas cabinet panels, where they are conventionally found, by integrating them directly onto the gas cylinder package itself. In this paper, we will outline a number of these integrated functions, and demonstrate how they can lead to improved safety and product quality while also lowering the users' cost of ownership (COO). For example, by integrating a fixed, sub-atmospheric pressure regulator into the cylinder valve, gas will only be dispensed when the suction of the process equipment is applied. As a result, the risk of a hazardous gas release to the atmosphere can be substantially controlled. Further, these integrated delivery systems can permit a greater filling density of the process gas compared to dilute mixtures or low-pressure adsorbent systems. The increased gas inventory significantly reduces the cost of ownership of the system by reducing down-time for cylinder replacements while still effectively mitigating the high pressure risks.
10:40 AM	Invited	AT-ThM-8 Responsible Care(r): Protecting our Industry J. Henninger (Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.) When Responsible Care was launched in the late 1980's, it was a groundbreaking initiative and unique in industry. Its goals were: improve environmental, health and safety performance and allay community concerns about the industry. As a result, the performance of the industry improved significantly as did the relationships with our neighbours but not the general public. The program is being expanded and improved significantly to address the issues of today, e.g., terrorism. The presentation will describe the Responsible Care and how Air Products uses it to protect our people, our customers, our communities, the environment, and our license to operate.