Partners in Sustainability
Over the past twelve years SSRC has worked with numerous companies from diverse
sectors to implement and improve sustainable design processes. Projects have focused on methods
for enhancement of both the economic and environmental performance of a product from design through recovery.
Design Tools for Sustainable Products
The vast majority of manufactured products are designed and produced without a concrete end-of-life strategy. Through a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, SSRC developed a series of sustainable design tools to enable product and process designers to create closed loop product systems. Tools were created to determine whether a part or product is a good candidate for reuse, recycle or remanufacture. In addition, six aspects of product design were studied to guide designers in the proper selection of design elements based on the chosen end-of-life option, including choice of wear coatings, lables, fasteners and selection of plastics. SSRC is now working with a number of companies to implement these tools as part of their design processes.
Hydrogen Learning Center
The US Department of Energy selected SSRC as the site for a hydrogen-technology learning center. The center educates students, potential end users, and the public about the potential of fuel cells and hydrogen energy while also assisting in the further development of SSRC’s alternative energy research.
Vehicle Material Recovery
In the vehicle material recovery project, the Sustainable Design Team
developed metrics and guidelines to streamline the recovery of products at the end of
their useful life. The Team developed a prototype model to estimate the costs of
different disassembly techniques - the cost to manually remove a riveted component,
for example. The model was used to develop a computer software package providing process designers with a
set of operational tools that allow for the best possible disassembly and recovery of commonly used
parts and materials.
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Fuel Cell Plate Remanufacturing
For a stationary fuel cell manufacturer, a remanufacturing process was developed, enabling the graphite plates from a fuel cell stack to be reused. Plates were previously scrapped after one use; reusing the plates will reduce the fuel cell cost. The cleaning process was transferred to the fuel cell manufacturer.
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