Mathias Janssen

Influence of high gravity process conditions on the environmental impact of ethanol production from wheat straw

Biofuel production processes at high gravity are currently under development. Most of these processes however use sugars or first generation feedstocks as substrate. This paper presents the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the production of bio-ethanol at high gravity conditions from a second generation feedstock, namely, wheat straw. The LCA used lab results of a set of 36 process configurations in which dry matter content, enzyme preparation and loading, and process strategy were varied. The LCA results show that higher dry matter content leads to a higher environmental impact of the ethanol production, but this can be compensated by reducing the impact of enzyme production and use, and by polyethylene glycol addition at high dry matter content. The results also show that the renewable and non-renewable energy use resulting from the different process configurations ultimately determine their environmental impact.

Developing a MOOC at Chalmers: Motivation and first experiences from a teacher’s perspective

An increasing number of universities around the globe produce and conduct Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Chalmers has followed this trend by starting to develop two MOOCs in 2014. While some research has attempted to assess the learners’ motivations to participate in MOOCs (e.g. Kizilcec et al. 2013), little is known about motivations, opportunities and challenges for teachers engaging in MOOC development. In this presentation, we will reflect upon this question drawing on the Chalmers MOOC “Sustainability in Everyday Life”. The MOOC aims to increase the learners’ capacity to appreciate the complexity of sustainability issues and to apply systems thinking and critical reflection on the information flow in public media. The pedagogical approach attempts to emphasize interactivity between learners with a minimum of teacher involvement. After brief introduction to MOOCs in general and at Chalmers in particular, the aim of this presentation is twofold: 1) from the teacher’s perspective, we share first experiences of developing a MOOC aimed at the general informed public, and 2) we identify issues with importance to pedagogical design, developing material and assessment. This is a first step in an action research program, which will be used to evaluate the benefits and challenges of MOOCs for teachers at Chalmers.

Evaluation of a MOOC on “Sustainability in Everyday Life” - The teachers’ experiences

Universities all over the world have been developing Massive Online Open Courses, MOOCs. In this paper, we discuss our experiences during the production of and running the MOOC “Sustainability in everyday life”, that was developed at Chalmers University of Technology. The MOOC ran over a period of 7 weeks, from early June until late July, 2015 and attracted about 9000 participants. The purpose of this paper is (1) to describe and evaluate the further development and content production, and subsequent running of the course; and (2) to share our experiences of running a MOOC for the first time. An action research approach, that focuses on the experience of the teachers, was combined with information obtained from the course statistics, and from the course evaluations by the participants. This approach was used to identify the challenges that were met during the development of the course material and running the MOOC. The results show that, on the one hand, the major challenges were the planning of the content production process and the formulation of the assignments. On the other hand, although time consuming, the production of the video content was perceived as a nice activity. The course statistics and evaluations by the MOOC participants reflected the teachers’ experiences to some extent, and this information can be used to improve the MOOC. The role of MOOCs in higher education for sustainable development (HESD) is not yet clear. This paper demonstrates that developing a MOOC from scratch is a complex process, and adaptation of on-campus courses may be a feasible alternative, thus making already existing courses more widely available.

Accounting for effects of carbon flows in LCA of biomass-based products—exploration and evaluation of a selection of existing methods

PurposeLife cycle assessment (LCA) has become one of the most widespread environmental assessment tools during the last two decades. However, there are still impacts that are not yet fully integrated, including climate impacts of land use. This study contributes to the development process by testing a selection of recently proposed climate impacts assessment methods, some more focused on the impact of land use and others more focused on a product’s carbon life cycle.MethodsSeveral assessment methods have been proposed in recent years, with their development still being in progress. Of these methods, we selected three methods that are more focused on the product’s carbon life cycle, and two methods more focused on the impact of land use. We applied the methods to an LCA study comparing biomass-based polyethylene (PE) packaging via different production routes in order to identify their methodological and practical challenges.Results and discussionWe found that including the impact of land use and carbon cycles had a profound effect on the results for global warming impact potential. It changed the ranking among the different routes for PE production, sometimes making biomass-based PE worse than the fossil alternative. Especially, the methods accounting for long time lags between carbon emissions and uptake in forestry punished the wood-based routes. Moreover, the variation in the results was considerable, showing that although assessment methods for climate impact can be applied to biomass-based products, their outcomes are not yet robust.ConclusionsWe recommend efforts to harmonize and reconcile different approaches for the assessment of climate impact of biomass-based products with regard to (1) how they consider time, (2) their applicability to both short and long rotation crops and (3) harmonization of concepts and terms used by the methods. We further recommend that all value laden methodological choices that are built into the methods, such as the choice of reference states/points, are made explicit and that the outcomes of different modelling choices are tested.

Producing and running a MOOC for the first time – Evaluation from the instructors' perspective

The MOOC “Sustainability in Everyday Life” was run for the first time in 2015. This was a first-time experience for the instructors. We evaluate the MOOC by examining the cooperation between the different groups involved in producing and running the MOOC, and how it changed over time.

Design and early development of a MOOC on ”Sustainability in everyday life”: Role of the teachers

Universities all over the world have developed Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) to attract students and explore new ways of learning. The MOOC “Sustainability in Everyday Life” (SiEL) is currently in its design and early development stage at Chalmers University of Technology. It aims at developing the MOOC participant’s capacity to appreciate the complexity of sustainable everyday life by developing skills such as systems thinking and critical reflection on the information flow in public media. This paper aims at sharing first experiences regarding the design and early development of the SiEL MOOC and identifying the role(s) of the teachers and its features during the course design and early development based on these first experiences. An action research approach was used to reach these aims, and the teachers’ narratives about these first experiences were used as data source. Three distinct processes (pedagogical, production and interaction) and six roles (owners, teachers, learners, designers, developers and negotiators) were identified. The teachers’ roles and the processes and activities taking place during the design and early development are closely linked to each other and need to be carefully considered in order to guarantee a successful MOOC design and development process.

Prospective life cycle assessment of adipic acid production from forest residue

Moving from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy requires the development of novel technologies for the production of bio-based chemicals and materials, and the Swedish forestry sector may play a major role in this. These technologies may become part of novel biorefinery concepts that combine the production of bulk and fine chemicals. This paper presents the life cycle assessment (LCA) of such a technology, in its early stages of development, which targets the biochemical production of adipic acid from Swedish forest residue. Adipic acid is a bulk chemical and its yearly production is approximately 2.3 million tonnes. It is mainly used as a precursor in the production of nylon, and its current fossil-based production process emits significant quantities of nitrous oxide (N2O), a strong greenhouse gas. Preliminary calculations showed that, compared to conventional adipic acid production, eliminating the emission of N2O would lead to a reduction of GWP by 75%, and that switching from a fossil-based to a biomass-based feedstock would reduce GWP by an additional 10%. This LCA focused on the technology for producing adipic acid, but also considered its connection with other technologies in the biorefinery concept. An anaerobic digestion process is used to produce biogas from the waste water. As well, lignin is produced as a by-product. The heat from biogas and lignin incineration can be used to meet the energy demands of the adipic acid production. Lab-scale experimental results were used in the assessment, and scaling up these results to an industrially relevant process capacity was done by using process modelling and simulation. Furthermore, an assessment was done of the impact of extracting forest residue from the Swedish forest. The results of this LCA show that the environmental impacts of producing adipic acid from forest residues, except for acidification potential, are significantly lower than those of its conventional production. The environmental hotspot of the technology is the downstream processing stage due to its need of additional energy which was assumed to be fossil. This additional energy is needed because of the low concentration of adipic acid in the fermentation broth. Further improvements can thus be made by minimizing fossil energy use in this stage, or by aiming for a higher end concentration of adipic acid in the fermentation broth. Lastly, the extraction of forest residue was found to only marginally contribute to global warming.

Guiding technology development using LCA: The case of bio-based adipic acid production

Moving from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy requires the development of new technologies for the production of bio-based chemicals and materials. These technologies may become part of novel biorefinery concepts that combine the production of bulk and fine chemicals. This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of such a novel concept in which forest residues and micro-algae are used as feedstock for the combined production of adipic acid and high value-added chemicals. Adipic acid is mainly used as a precursor in the production of nylon, and its current fossil-based production process emits significant quantities of nitrous oxide (N2O), a highly potent greenhouse gas. There is thus a great potential to reduce the global warming potential of the production of adipic acid, and consequently nylon. The novel biorefinery concept is the main target of a multi-disciplinary R&D project. The concept is in a very early stage of development which mostly consists of experimental lab work. There are some challenges that must be overcome to evaluate the concept using life cycle assessment at this early development stage. Scaling up lab results to an industrially relevant process capacity needs to be addressed in order to e.g. account for changes in yield. This can be done using process modeling and simulation. The total scale of production is another aspect which is important for the assessment of bio-based products, because the environmental impact of biomass production is not linearly dependent on the amount harvested. Furthermore, the results of the assessment need to be communicated in a meaningful way to the stakeholders who have different backgrounds and are often not familiar with LCA. The paper will discuss these challenges for the case of bio-based adipic acid production using the novel biorefinery concept, and will present results from the assessment and compare these to the case of fossil-based adipic acid production.