Georgia Tech Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering professors Elsa Reichmanis and Mahmood Sabahi have recently published an article detailing their experience teaching a class in green chemistry.  The class is called “Fundamentals and Challenges for a Sustainable Chemical Enterprise,” and was offered in the Spring semester of 2017 (CHEM4833/ChBE4803: CHEM8833/ChBE8803).  It will be offered again in the Spring semester of 2018.  It is a Serve – Learn – Sustain affiliated course.  The course was designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students so that they would understand the National Research Council’s eight sustainability grand challenges from the perspective of an industry-based context, and how they contribute to the long-term sustainability of the enterprise.  In addition to the Grand Challenges, the pilot class of 26 students were introduced to chemical manufacturing, intellectual property, regulatory frameworks and registration, and process hazard and safety.  Guest speakers from companies such as Albemarle, BASF, Dow, ExxonMobil, GSK, Solvay, and PepsiCo were kind enough to donate their time to present their companies’ approach to sustainability.

The primary focus of the course is for student teams to use Life cycle inventory (LCI) assessment and patent literature on existing products in the market to develop a virtual manufacturing process for the product. The students then offer recommendations for optimizing the processes to be more sustainable. This past semester, student groups completed nine LCI assessment projects in all.  Professors Reichmanis’ and Sabahi’s paper gives details on the course objectives, approach, LCI methodology, results, conclusions, and lessons learned.  This work was supported, in part, by the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems.  Reichmanis was named a Brook Byers Professor in 2014.

For more details, please see:

Elsa Reichmanis, Mahmood Sabahi, “Life Cycle Inventory Assessment as a Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering Education Tool,” ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b03144.