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Research | Japanese / English |
| Last Update : 9th Nov 2005 |
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Laboratory of Process System Engineering, Lifecycle Engineering
The global citizens face a variety of sustainability challenges, which requires each of the players in the society to make robust decisions with an extended scope, while the world is more diverse, complex and competitive then ever. Since its establishment in 1997, the PSE&LCE group has been tackling various design questions, and developing decision support tools in the modern industrialized society. |
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Process Design | Theme Example |
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Challenge in process design is to consider the environmental impacts of
production activity in early design stages of production process, not
after giving impact to the environment. If experiments are possible, we
can learn by mistake. However, if global environment is involved, we
cannot take the trial-and-error approach. The impacts to be considered in a design project should include not only emissions from the production process itself but also impacts arise across the environmental lifecycle of the product such as mining, production, manufacturing, use, and disposal. Systems engineering plays an important role to organize individual process models up to product lifecycle, and to design systems in conformance with sustainability requirements. Using advanced information technologies and modeling and simulation techniques, our aim is to a design platform, which integrate relevant knowledge accumulated through individual R&D efforts. |
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Technology Assessment | Theme Example |
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Development of the new advanced technologies is a key to tackle
sustainability issues. However, it is also true that introduction of
advanced technologies have been one of the primary source of the
sustainability issues. Development, implementation, and replacement of
a technology should be done in a strategic manner. We integrate life cycle approaches with scenario planning, in order to assess the future situations with the new technologies, from multiple facets of sustainability concepts. Scenario planning approach helps us to identify diverse possible future situations and find relevant factors in developing better strategies. |
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Life Cycle Management | Theme Example |
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Products, production processes, and technologies can be “sustainable”
only if the systems of relevant product life cycle is workable in a
sustainable way. For example, no matter how a recycling is favorable in
terms of environmental impact, such an system cannot exist without
sufficient demand of such an recycled substances. In order to make such
a workable systems, challenges in the management level is tremendous. More than a half of CO2 emission arises in the use phase of final products in Japan. This fact shows that the role of consumers is significant. However, very limited information is directed to making differences in consumer activities. Using tools and data from life cycle assessment, we are developing an environmental management support system for consumers. |
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