The combined effect of increasing global population and wealth growth leads to tremendous sustainability challenges, including natural resource depletion and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. As sustainability is inherently anthropocentric, and human well-being is considered the primary area of protection, that is, the aspect that should primarily be sustained, we must take immediate actions to confront these challenges. These actions are needed to avoid reaching the thresholds and tipping points within planetary boundaries, such as biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and climate change. To meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own,” technological improvements hold the key to maintaining sustainability pressures and impacts.
Sustainable separation process development plays a critical role in enabling the economic and environmental aspects of sustainability. Separations can be energy intensive, and early-stage or emerging separation technologies can also be cost prohibitive. For example, separations in biomass-based fuels and chemicals production can constitute up to 50% of the production cost, and industrial separations can account for up to 15% of total energy consumption in the United States.
Climate change is one of the most pressing sustainability challenges in this century. Combating climate change requires cutting carbon emissions originating in human activities, primarily associated with energy consumption. Therefore, lowering separations energy demand can help decarbonize the chemical industry and mitigate climate change.
In addition to climate change, resource depletion, such as fossil fuels, is also an important sustainability challenge. Replacing petroleum-based fuels and chemicals with renewable alternatives, such as ones derived from biomass, can address this challenge. However, biomass conversion processes are still in their nascent stage, with separations as one of the key challenges, e.g., costly, complex, and dilute product stream. Thus, novel separations technologies can address the technical challenges bioprocessing separation pose. Sustainable separation process development holds the key to addressing the associated high cost and/or energy demand, improving economic feasibility, and the lifecycle environmental impact benefits, including greenhouse gas emissions. Last but not least, new separation approaches and capabilities can also enable other emerging technologies, of which the separations cannot be accomplished with existing separations technologies.
Overall, separations are an integral part of many industrial processes and play an enabling role to help the industry meet many United Nations sustainable development goals (SDG), such as clean energy, responsible production, and climate change mitigation. We need to have a wide discussion within the scientific community to move forward. This Research Topic aims to cover promising, emerging, and novel research trends in approaching separations.
This Research Topic will present and discuss current industrial approaches, emerging research trends and focus on main challenges the separations field needs to address from the global sustainability perspective. This collection welcomes various article type, including Original Research, Review, and Perspective. Areas to be covered in this Research Topic may include, but are not limited to:
• Emerging and disruptive separations technologies
• Assessment of technology readiness levels (TRL)
• Renewable chemicals and energy, e.g., bioproducts and biofuels
• Process integration, process scale-up, and process intensification
• Decarbonization
• Circular economy and bioeconomy
• Separations and sustainability
• Economic, environmental, and social impacts assessment through techno-economic analysis (TEA), life cycle assessment (LCA), and other sustainability analyses
• Challenges and opportunities for future research that are relevant to implementing emerging technologies
The combined effect of increasing global population and wealth growth leads to tremendous sustainability challenges, including natural resource depletion and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. As sustainability is inherently anthropocentric, and human well-being is considered the primary area of protection, that is, the aspect that should primarily be sustained, we must take immediate actions to confront these challenges. These actions are needed to avoid reaching the thresholds and tipping points within planetary boundaries, such as biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and climate change. To meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own,” technological improvements hold the key to maintaining sustainability pressures and impacts.
Sustainable separation process development plays a critical role in enabling the economic and environmental aspects of sustainability. Separations can be energy intensive, and early-stage or emerging separation technologies can also be cost prohibitive. For example, separations in biomass-based fuels and chemicals production can constitute up to 50% of the production cost, and industrial separations can account for up to 15% of total energy consumption in the United States.
Climate change is one of the most pressing sustainability challenges in this century. Combating climate change requires cutting carbon emissions originating in human activities, primarily associated with energy consumption. Therefore, lowering separations energy demand can help decarbonize the chemical industry and mitigate climate change.
In addition to climate change, resource depletion, such as fossil fuels, is also an important sustainability challenge. Replacing petroleum-based fuels and chemicals with renewable alternatives, such as ones derived from biomass, can address this challenge. However, biomass conversion processes are still in their nascent stage, with separations as one of the key challenges, e.g., costly, complex, and dilute product stream. Thus, novel separations technologies can address the technical challenges bioprocessing separation pose. Sustainable separation process development holds the key to addressing the associated high cost and/or energy demand, improving economic feasibility, and the lifecycle environmental impact benefits, including greenhouse gas emissions. Last but not least, new separation approaches and capabilities can also enable other emerging technologies, of which the separations cannot be accomplished with existing separations technologies.
Overall, separations are an integral part of many industrial processes and play an enabling role to help the industry meet many United Nations sustainable development goals (SDG), such as clean energy, responsible production, and climate change mitigation. We need to have a wide discussion within the scientific community to move forward. This Research Topic aims to cover promising, emerging, and novel research trends in approaching separations.
This Research Topic will present and discuss current industrial approaches, emerging research trends and focus on main challenges the separations field needs to address from the global sustainability perspective. This collection welcomes various article type, including Original Research, Review, and Perspective. Areas to be covered in this Research Topic may include, but are not limited to:
• Emerging and disruptive separations technologies
• Assessment of technology readiness levels (TRL)
• Renewable chemicals and energy, e.g., bioproducts and biofuels
• Process integration, process scale-up, and process intensification
• Decarbonization
• Circular economy and bioeconomy
• Separations and sustainability
• Economic, environmental, and social impacts assessment through techno-economic analysis (TEA), life cycle assessment (LCA), and other sustainability analyses
• Challenges and opportunities for future research that are relevant to implementing emerging technologies
