(Member of Chinese Academy of Engineering Nie Zuoren delivered the keynote speech entitled “Theory and practice of eco-materials and material life cycle engineering” at IFAM 2020 (International Forum on Advanced Materials 2020))
Achieving the goal of carbon emission peak and carbon neutrality is a solemn pledge made by China to the international community, which has been included in the proposal of the 14th five-year plan.
Material is the hard & core technology at the forefront of global science & technology
Nie Zuoren, Member of Chinese Academy of Engineering and President of BJUT, claimed that after 40 years of fast development driven by reform and opening up, China has become the top in terms of output and scale of basic materials globally. However, as the material industry expanded, there are prominent supply and guarantee problems of basic mineral resources and energy and increasingly acute environmental pollution bottlenecks in China. The material industry used to provide low-cost primary products for the international market largely with the advantages of the huge output and scale, but such an international circulation model cannot survive longer. In today's world, regional disputes over resources and energy are more heated; ecological and environmental problems are ever more serious in the world. Thus, to greatly promote ecological process of the materials has become the key to the sustainable development of the materials industry.
The largest national scientific data platform for material life-cycle-assessment in China
Since the mid-1990s, Zuo Tieyong of BJUT, also member of Chinese Academy of Engineering, pioneered the development of eco-materials in China. Nie Zuoren, member of Chinese Academy of Engineering and his team enriched and developed the theory of eco-material assessment and design & preparation technology. They also included resources, environment, and other indicators into the comprehensive material performance assessment, further expanding the meanings of four elements of materials science and engineering. As they gained more profound knowledge about the concept of eco-materials, they proposed the frontier theory of material life-cycle engineering and made a number of important achievements and significant progress in the application of such theory. The team established the models of resource consumption and land use characterization of eco-materials, calculation models of energy flow, logistics and parameters for emission process, as well as environmental load analysis and assessment methods of the material manufacturing process, which both represent the characteristic of China and conform to international standards. Those models solved the difficulties in the quantitative assessment of comprehensive environmental load of eco-materials and expanded a new field of the discipline on material life-cycle assessment and material flow analysis which is in line with international standards and suitable for the national conditions in China, securing them an academic status with high international influence. The results were published in Int.J.of LCA (Germany), the international prestigious journal and also the joint journey by ISO / SETAC organization and LCA Societies in many countries. Nie Zuoren, member of Chinese Academy of Engineering has built the largest national scientific data platform for material life-cycle assessment in China and has widespread influence at home and abroad. He serves as a member of the Global Alliance for Life Cycle Assessment Centers (GALAC) on behalf of China.
National Engineering Laboratory for Industrial Big Data Application Technology promotes low carbon and green development of the industry
In 2017, BJUT was approved to build the National Engineering Laboratory for Industrial Big Data Application Technology, and established the whole-life-cycle big data application technology platform in the domestic process industry, providing key technologies for multi-objective optimization of industrial process and multi-dimensional control of product quality.Through long-term cooperation with hundreds of key enterprises in the material industry, the Laboratory has accumulated over 300 data of production line in the process industry and possessed the capability to process PB level real-time industrial big data. In the aspect of enterprise’s greenhouse gas emission (also known as carbon emission) accounting, the Laboratory introduced the uncertainty analysis method of greenhouse gas emission accounting based on error propagation and Monte Carlo simulation, which provide a basis to revise the national standard for greenhouse gas emission monitoring and measurement. It has taken a lead in the low-carbon and green development by considering the exact needs of the industry.
New materials form new system; new development brings a new future
By establishing a new green and low-carbon development model for the materials industry, material life-cycle engineering helps enterprises to transform their technology and makes greater contributions to realizing China’s goals of carbon emission peak and carbon neutrality.
