The NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR) system and access will be unavailable from 11:00 PM ET on Thursday, October 10 until 2:00 AM ET on Friday, October 11 due to maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience.
This content will become publicly available on June 1, 2025
Title: Sustainability metrics and technical solution derivation for performance improvement of electroplating facilities
The electroplating industry has been highly environmentally regulated due to the use of a variety of hazardous or toxic chemicals and waste generation in various forms within and out of the workplace. Electroplating facilities, mostly small- and medium-sized, are also operated at a low profit margin. Thus, helping the facilities develop effective strategies for sustainable development becomes a focal point in the industry. In this paper, we introduce a sustainability metrics system specifically designed for the assessment of electroplating systems of any type and any production capacity. Using the metrics system, we formulate the sustainability assessment process and evaluate the sustainability performance of facilities and technology candidates, and a holistic solution method for identifying optimal technologies for the system’s sustainability performance improvement. We take into account uncertainty in data and the relative improvement of sustainability based on technologies while using the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) for a more systematic and uniform way of determining weighting factors. The methodological efficacy is demonstrated through a case study on five electroplating facilities. The results show the
economic, environmental, and social sustainability performances as well as technical solutions for the evaluation of seven technology sets for each facility. The results also show the practical applications of the assessment methodology such as the identification of the misallocation of funds or increases in profitability. more »« less
Cornejo, Pablo K.; Becker, Jennifer; Pagilla, Krishna; Mo, Weiwei; Zhang, Qiong; Mihelcic, James R.; Chandran, Kartik; Sturm, Belinda; Yeh, Daniel; Rosso, Diego(
, Water Environment Research)
Abstract
The recovery of water, energy, and nutrients from water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) is needed to address significant global challenges, such as increasing water demand and decreasing availability of nonrenewable resources. To meet these challenges, innovative technological developments must lead to increased adoption of water and resource recovery processes, while addressing stakeholder needs (e.g., innovators, practitioners, regulators). A test bed network of over 90 partner facilities within the United States and abroad will help accelerate innovation and widespread adoption of novel processes through multiscale testing and demonstration of technologies. In this paper, we define a common set of environmental, economic, technical, and social performance metrics for innovative technologies, that will meet the needs of multiple stakeholders in the decision‐making process. These triple bottom line performance metrics can be used to track the sustainability of technologies in a consistent and transparent manner, while aiding the decision‐making process forWRRFs.
Practitioner points
The Facilities Accelerating Science and Technology (FAST) Water Network includes over 90 test bed facilities dedicated to accelerating innovation and adoption of water energy, and nutrient recovery systems.
A common set of environmental, economic, technical, and social performance metrics should be measured and reported when a new technology is evaluated in the FAST Water Network.
Performance metrics can aid sustainable decision‐making at WRRF, while meeting the needs of multiple stakeholders.
Freidberg, Susanne(
, Science, Technology, & Human Values)
Metrics have long served as tools for governing at a distance. In the food industry, major manufacturers have embraced metrics as tools to govern the sustainability of the farms producing their commodity raw materials. This metrical turn has been influenced but also complicated by agricultural datafication, that is, the increasing quantities of data generated on and about farms. Despite the sheer abundance of data that companies might use to measure and drive improvement in on-farm sustainability, they have struggled to collect data suitable for such purposes. Attention to the different kinds of distance and diversity across which metrics are supposed to govern suggests reasons why they may fail to do so, even when wielded by otherwise powerful corporations.
The aggregation of individual personality tests to predict team performance is widely accepted in management theory but has significant limitations: the isolated nature of individual personality surveys fails to capture much of the team dynamics that drive real-world team performance. Artificial Swarm Intelligence (ASI), a technology that enables networked teams to think together in real-time and answer questions as a unified system, promises a solution to these limitations by enabling teams to take personality tests together, whereby the team uses ASI to converge upon answers that best represent the group’s disposition. In the present study, the group personality of 94 small teams was assessed by having teams take a standard Big Five Inventory (BFI) test both as individuals, and as a real-time system enabled by an ASI technology known as Swarm AI. The predictive accuracy of each personality assessment method was assessed by correlating the BFI personality traits to a range of real-world performance metrics. The results showed that assessments of personality generated using Swarm AI were far more predictive of team performance than the traditional survey-based method, showing a significant improvement in correlation with at least 25% of performance metrics, and in no case showing a significant decrease in predictive performance. This suggests that Swarm AI technology may be used as a highly effective team personality assessment tool that more accurately predicts future team performance than traditional survey approaches.
Liu, Xinyu; Bakshi, Bhavik R.(
, Journal of Industrial Ecology)
Summary
Life cycle assessment (LCA) has enabled consideration of environmental impacts beyond the narrow boundary of traditional engineering methods. This reduces the chance of shifting impacts outside the system boundary. However, sustainability also requires that supporting ecosystems are not adversely affected and remain capable of providing goods and services for supporting human activities. Conventional LCA does not account for this role of nature, and its metrics are best for comparing alternatives. These relative metrics do not provide information about absolute environmental sustainability, which requires comparison between the demand and supply of ecosystem services (ES). Techno‐ecological synergy (TES) is a framework to account for ES, and has been demonstrated by application to systems such as buildings and manufacturing activities that have narrow system boundaries.
This article develops an approach for techno‐ecological synergy in life cycle assessment (TES‐LCA) by expanding the steps in conventional LCA to incorporate the demand and supply of ecosystem goods and services at multiple spatial scales. This enables calculation of absolute environmental sustainability metrics, and helps identify opportunities for improving a life cycle not just by reducing impacts, but also by restoring and protecting ecosystems. TES‐LCA of a biofuel life cycle demonstrates this approach by considering the ES of carbon sequestration, air quality regulation, and water provisioning. Results show that for the carbon sequestration ecosystem service, farming can be locally sustainable but unsustainable at the global or serviceshed scale. Air quality regulation is unsustainable at all scales, while water provisioning is sustainable at all scales for this study in the eastern part of the United States.
The manufacturing workspace and the technician workforce that supports that space tomorrow is an important issue to deal with today. As Industry 4.0 is absorbed into manufacturing facilities around the country, engineering technicians working in these facilities adjust to make tomorrow today. The National Science Foundation has supported the Florida Advanced Technological Education Center (FLATE) contiguously since 2004. FLATE's intent is to craft a manufacturing workforce that makes Florida manufacturers globally competitive. FLATE crafted and the Florida Department of Education now supported two-year Engineering Technology degree (A.S. ET) is the vehicle for manufacturing education in Florida. The degree is offered in over 85% of the colleges in the Florida College System (FCS) and has over 2,000 students enrolled statewide.
The current NSF-supported project is to conduct an I4.0-focused Caucus of manufacturers and ET degree college faculty to collectively identify skill issues that will affect manufacturing
production efficiency and product reliability. The project team initially used the nine Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technology areas identified by the Boston Consulting Group and selected four that will directly impact starting technicians working in companies that are already implementing Industry 4.0 technologies: (1) Autonomous Robots, (2) Simulation, (3) Industrial Internet of Things and (4) Additive/Subtractive Manufacturing and Advanced Materials. Technician skills are defined as those needed to set up, operate, troubleshoot, and maintain production and process equipment. Specific skills that fall in the I4.0 technologies identified as relevant for starting technicians were defined to be those that will be needed in the next 3-5 years. Initial questionnaire responses and subsequent data analysis detail are provided. Identified skills gaps as recognized by the manufacturers and faculty are provided and discussed.
Siddiqui, A, Potoff, a, and Huang, Y. Sustainability metrics and technical solution derivation for performance improvement of electroplating facilities. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10537780. Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy 26.6 Web. doi:10.1007/s10098-023-02696-9.
Siddiqui, A, Potoff, a, & Huang, Y. Sustainability metrics and technical solution derivation for performance improvement of electroplating facilities. Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, 26 (6). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10537780. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-023-02696-9
Siddiqui, A, Potoff, a, and Huang, Y.
"Sustainability metrics and technical solution derivation for performance improvement of electroplating facilities". Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy 26 (6). Country unknown/Code not available: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-023-02696-9.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10537780.
@article{osti_10537780,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Sustainability metrics and technical solution derivation for performance improvement of electroplating facilities},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10537780},
DOI = {10.1007/s10098-023-02696-9},
abstractNote = {The electroplating industry has been highly environmentally regulated due to the use of a variety of hazardous or toxic chemicals and waste generation in various forms within and out of the workplace. Electroplating facilities, mostly small- and medium-sized, are also operated at a low profit margin. Thus, helping the facilities develop effective strategies for sustainable development becomes a focal point in the industry. In this paper, we introduce a sustainability metrics system specifically designed for the assessment of electroplating systems of any type and any production capacity. Using the metrics system, we formulate the sustainability assessment process and evaluate the sustainability performance of facilities and technology candidates, and a holistic solution method for identifying optimal technologies for the system’s sustainability performance improvement. We take into account uncertainty in data and the relative improvement of sustainability based on technologies while using the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) for a more systematic and uniform way of determining weighting factors. The methodological efficacy is demonstrated through a case study on five electroplating facilities. The results show the economic, environmental, and social sustainability performances as well as technical solutions for the evaluation of seven technology sets for each facility. The results also show the practical applications of the assessment methodology such as the identification of the misallocation of funds or increases in profitability.},
journal = {Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy},
volume = {26},
number = {6},
publisher = {Springer},
author = {Siddiqui, A and Potoff, a and Huang, Y},
editor = {Araujo, O}
}
Warning: Leaving National Science Foundation Website
You are now leaving the National Science Foundation website to go to a non-government website.
Website:
NSF takes no responsibility for and exercises no control over the views expressed or the accuracy of
the information contained on this site. Also be aware that NSF's privacy policy does not apply to this site.
