Science, and Technological Applications for a Transformational Low Cost Multifunctional Ultrananocrystalline Diamond (UNCD^TM) Coating for Sustainability Fields

This 4 minutes summary talk is to show a brief description of the Science and Technological applications of a transformational material named Ultrananocrystalline Diamond (UNCD^TM) in film (coating) form, which can be considered as impacting “sustainability” (defined as study of how natural systems function, remain diverse and may be used to produce devices and systems that can contribute to keep ecology in balance and help to sustain and improve the way and quality of life on Earth). The transformational low cost UNCD^TM coating, developed / patented by Auciello and colleagues, exhibit highest hardness and Young’s modulus similar to diamond gems / lowest friction of any material, highest resistance to chemical corrosion by any fluid from nature and the human body, electrical conductivity via Nitrogen or Boron atoms doping, and best biocompatibility. The UNCD coatings exhibit the smallest gran size (3-5 nm) than any polycrystalline diamond film in the world today and are grown by microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) and hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD). The multifunctionalities of UNCD coatings enabled the many technological applications shown in the figure below, and more. some making impact in “sustainability”, as indicated in the figure below.

Extraction of Fluorine from PFAS

As part of an effort to synthesize porous materials, it was discovered that rare earth metal ions can extract fluorine from perfluoronated acid (PFA) and perfluorohexanoic acid. Removing the fluorines makes the molecule biodegradable. This is exciting because the family of PFA molecules has been identified as a significant environmental and health threat. PFAs have been found in water and food supplies as well in humans.  The remediation and removal of PFAs is a significant challenge. We now have a system that readily defluorinates PFAs which could be a significant advance.

The buildings sector accounts for over 40% of all U.S. primary energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In 2018, ~7.59 quads of energy (equivalent to ~$20 billion) was lost through unnecessary large area environmental conditioning and poor thermal insulation of building components, making it imperative to reduce energy consumption in buildings through the development of next-generation, energy-efficient building technologies and practices. Superabsorbent polymers, or hydrogels, are materials that contain more than ~ 90 wt% water and are commonly used in contact lenses, wound dressing, tissue engineering, and drug delivery. Recently, hydrogels have been proposed for temperature and humidity control of buildings due to their superabsorbent and environmentally friendly capability. The goal of this study was to develop hydrogels-based materials for energy-efficient thermal comfort control of buildings. Multiple approaches at the forefront of hydrogels for next-generation building technologies have been studied including the development of artificial ‘skins’ for building cooling, thermo-responsive adsorbents for moisture control, and composite phase change materials (PCMs) for thermal energy storage (TES). Highly stretchable and mechanically tough double network hydrogels (DN-Gels) were developed as durable and reusable “sweating skins” for building cooling. These DN-Gels demonstrate outstanding cooling performance, reducing the top roof surface temperature of wooden house models by 25－30°C for up to 7 hours after only a single hydration charge. DN-Gels exhibit extraordinary toughness and cyclability due to their interpenetrated ionically and covalently cross-linked networks, as demonstrated by constant cooling performance over more than 50 cycles. Our results suggest that bio-inspired sweat cooling using tough DN-Gel coatings represents a promising energy-efficient technology for cooling buildings with a reduction of ~290 kWh of annual electricity consumption for air conditioning and ~160 kg of CO2 emission. Thermo-responsive hydrogel composite (TRHC) adsorbents with high adsorption capacity and low energy-cost regeneration are also developed for efficient humidity control of buildings. Traditional solid adsorbents (i.e., silica gels) have a tradeoff between their adsorption and desorption capability with either low adsorption capacity or high regeneration temperature due to their fixed affinity to adsorbates. In contrast, TRHC adsorbents have drastically different affinities to water upon phase transition thanks to their thermo-responsive matrix. This results in both high adsorption capacity and low energy-cost regeneration at the same time. TRHC desiccant represents a promising energy-efficient humidity control technology by consuming only 1/6 energy compared to silica gels during the regeneration.

Dr. D. Todd Griffith is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he is also Deputy Director and co-founder of the UTD Center for Wind Energy.  Dr. Griffith’s research is focused on new clean, renewable energy technologies, namely the design of new, large-scale, reliable and cost-effective wind turbine concepts ranging from land-based wind turbines to new offshore wind concepts in deep-water locations that require floating systems.

Wind turbines are the largest rotating structures in the world, and wind energy is the leading source of new electricity installation in the USA. Despite its success, the wind energy field can benefit from more sustainable practices throughout the design and life-cycle of a wind turbine. Our research in wind energy is multi-disciplinary in nature as wind turbine design involves aerodynamics, structures, materials, dynamics, sensing, control systems, power electronics, economics, marketing, manufacturing, project management, financing, and many others! This talk will present an overview of wind energy technology development research at UT-Dallas, and will seek to start a discussion about collaborative opportunities for sustainability research across the range of disciplines noted above.

Reducing food waste in supply chains

Between 30 and 40% of the food produced in the United States goes uneaten, with the food waste occurring at various levels of the supply chain: the farmers, the food manufacturers, the logistics partners, the retail stores and the end consumers.  Discarded perishables in landfills produce methane, which is a major contributor to climate change.  It is also morally shocking to be wasting so much food when an estimated 1 out of 8 Americans is food-insecure.

My research is focused on minimizing food waste in supply chains and households.  I investigate so-called “win-win propositions”, which can simultaneously increase profits for businesses and reduce the amount of product wasted.  In particular, I study the impact of the following initiatives: (i) providing loose/bulk sale options to consumers, that is, the option to determine the exact quantity of product they wish to purchase, instead of being constrained by fixed package sizes; (ii) optimizing the shipment policies from warehouses to retail stores, that is, carefully selecting the age of the units to ship, taking into account that the cost of expiration is typically higher at retail stores compared to warehouses and distribution centers; (iii) offering carefully-timed discounts on soon-to-expire products, in order to expand market share without excessively cannibalizing sales; (iv) modifying the display of products in ways that affect consumers’ ability to select the oldest vs freshest units of products in inventory; (v) offering delayed sales promotions (e.g., coupons to redeem at the next store visit) rather than immediate (e.g., buy-one-get-one-free) ones, in order to encourage staggered consumption and lower household waste as well as retail store waste.   

My research methodology is the development of stylized models which capture the relevant decision variables and trade-offs.  By solving the models, I obtain valuable insights for supply chain partners and policy makers on how to tackle the problem of food waste.   

Offshore turbine Clusters for Energy and Acquaculture Enhancing Sustainability

At over 100 GW of installed capacity, wind is the largest source of renewable energy in the U.S. To reach 35% of the nation’s electricity needs, wind capacity needs to quadruple to 400 GW by 2050.  By necessity, much of this increase in wind capacity will come from offshore wind energy with farms covering hundreds to hundreds of thousands of square miles. While a few isolated turbines may not significantly affect ocean circulation and the atmosphere, the effects of a major deployment of wind turbines on local to regional physical and biological processes is for the most part unknown. Preliminary idealized numerical simulations of fixed turbine farms suggest that even at light to moderate wind speeds (5-10 m s-1), the spatially variable wind stress in the wake of a turbine can induce significant upwelling and downwelling currents in the upper ocean (1 m day-1; Broström, 2008). These vertical velocities and modified mixing in the wake of the farm will alter the downstream stratification. Consequently, nutrients, such as nitrate, could be mixed into the surface layers and result in enhanced primary production.  The turbulence and mixing around wind farms may also reduce settlement of fouling organisms on the seaweed and cultivation system, as well as sediment build-up.

Our goal is to understand the impact of offshore wind energy on offshore ecosystems, and possible co-location of aquaculture within the wind farm array, potentially enhancing carbon sequestration.

Modeling and Controls of Building Energy Systems for Efficient and Grid-interactive Operation

Buildings are responsible for 40% of the total energy consumption, thus efficient and sustainable buildings are critical for reducing carbon footprint and enhancing environmental sustainability.  Contemporary building energy systems feature heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, behind-the-meter renewable energy, onsite energy storage, incentive-driven grid interactions, and integration with electrified transportation. However, controls of building energy systems for efficient and economic operations are challenged by complex physics of building and equipment, uncertainties in load profiles and resource availability, as well as cost-driven industrial practice.

To meet such challenges, our group has conducted research on modeling and controls of building energy systems, with major efforts on the following aspects:

1) Dynamic simulation modeling of building energy systems with acausal, equation-based multi-physical modeling platform. While dynamic simulation is the key to cost-effective development of quality control strategies, building energy systems feature the challenging large-scale differential-algebraic equation systems. We have developed Modelica based dynamic simulation models for various building HVAC systems, which have greatly facilitated the development and evaluation of advanced control strategies, fault detection and diagnosis, and model-based system design.

2) Model-free optimizing control strategies for efficient operation of building HVAC systems. As building industry is a cost-driven sector, model-free controls are highly desired for HVAC system. We have proposed model-free control strategies by use of extremum seeking control and other techniques, for various HVAC systems from heat pumps, chiller plants, to variable-refrigerant-flow systems.

3) Grid-interactive efficient controls of building energy systems. As a major energy consumption sector, building energy systems have become a major resource for supporting and stabilizing modern power grid. With model-based and model-free optimizing control techniques, we have developed intelligent control strategies to facilitate demand response and ancillary services (e.g. frequency regulation) from residential heat pump systems to chilled-water plant for large building clusters with electric vehicle integration.

My research examines the social and economic aspects of sustainability. Toward this end, I have explored several areas including autonomous vehicle technology (AVT) adoption by older Americans to maintain independence; the resilience of public pension systems through Ostrom’s Social Ecological Systems framework; and the potential for blockchain technology to re-shape anti-trust policy through a lens of complexity science. Particularly, this work provides an intellectual framework (i.e., complex adaptive systems perspective and path dependence) and methodological tools (i.e., agent-based modeling) to explore the dynamics of the antitrust regulatory environment.

The concept of path dependence in recent years has taken on increased importance in the fields of economics, politics and public policy, as well as other scholarly areas.  Much of this literature, with notable exceptions, can help explain or at least describe why it can be so difficult to move to a different developmental path once a commitment has been made to a particular course of action.  Moreover, the longer the commitment to that course of action, the more difficult to change course, even if such a change of direction would represent the wisest course of action.  That, at least, is the general thrust of the literature. 

In many instances, to better understand such systems, viewing them from a common pooled resource perspective is useful. Elinor Ostrom (1990), in her seminal book Governing the Commons, provides eight principles that facilitate governing common pool resources. The general theme running through Ostrom’s principles is the need to facilitate the building and channeling of social capital. By facilitating constructive collective choice, the goal of effective, sustainable collective action is achievable. I have examined the governance practices of the Dallas and Houston pension systems to determine which appear to violate Ostrom’s ideal institutional arrangements and their impact on the pensions’ long-term sustainability.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Global Environmental Regulations: Evidence from the Paris Agreement Exit

In 2017, United States President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. Although there were concerns that the exit would impede the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the environmental performance of U.S. firms in carbon-intensive sectors improved after the announcement at a significantly higher pace than firms in other sectors. Moreover, our findings are concentrated among firms exposed to higher public attention. One implication is that firms under greater public scrutiny used the U.S.’s departure from the agreement as an opportunity to credibly signal their commitment to combating global climate change.

UTD Wind: A Center for Wind Energy Research and Education

Wind power is one of the fastest-growing renewable energy sources in the world and the United States. The pace of growth requires new concepts for wind turbines and wind plants and a talented workforce for research, development, manufacturing, and operations. UTD Wind conducts fundamental and applied research in wind energy systems such as blades and rotors; control systems; fluid flows and field measurements, materials and structural modeling and measurements; digital twins for wind turbines and their primary components; energy storage and grid integration. The center provides solutions to the wind power industry and works on novel turbine and system-level designs for land-based and offshore wind power. The center is composed of faculty members, research and administrative staff, and graduate and undergraduate students. UTD Wind is home to an NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center WindSTAR, which the only Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for wind energy research and education. The Center is a partnership between academia (UMass Lowell and UT Dallas), the federal government, and the private sector. The Center’s industry partners include OEMs, component suppliers, and owners/operators of wind plants. WindSTAR’s goal is to decrease cost and increase reliability in all stages of wind power plant development. This “lightning talk” will describe active research areas and opportunities for collaboration with “UTD Wind.”

Sensing in Service of Society

There is a clear societal need for smart sensors as a service to provide timely actionable insights in a variety of domains while also providing cutting-edge training for graduate and undergraduate students who are equipped to address these needs. Our vision is to provide holistic smart sensing in the service of society in order to provide timely actionable insights and to inform transparent transformative data-driven decisions and policy. Our sensing employs nine different sentinel types, ranging from global scale satellite remote sensing to 24/7 live sensing across dense urban environments, as well as autonomous robotic teams (air, water, and land) and wearable sensors. Machine learning combined with holistic sensors as a service proves to be a powerful tool in addressing a wide range of difficult societal issues such as drought preparedness, air quality and health impacts, and rapid response to hazardous releases ranging from oil spills to harmful algal blooms. Dr. Simmons is presenting on behalf of Dr. David Lary.

Geospatial Information Science for Sustainability Research

Geospatial Information Science (GIScience) converges geographic knowledge and computational methods to drive a new understanding of how we relate to the environment, how the relationships evolve, and how we may co-operate in the evolution for greater goods. At the core of GIScience is the emphasis on integrated spatial reference frames for holistic approaches to examine and address complex issues of human-environment interactions. The United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda for sustainable development recognizes the need to balance social, economic, and environmental sustainability and the highly integrative nature of development that actions in one area affect the outcomes of the others. In the lightning talk, I will share some GIScience research and highlight what GIScience can contribute to sustainable development.

The Impact of Cyber Societal Change on  Sustainability

This talk will focus on cyber societal change and the impact on sustainability.  Key cyber societal change factors include education distribution and consumption, workplace paradigms, commerce, and the resultant evolution in social interaction. Transportation and infrastructure are among key sectors affected by these cyber societal changes.  Modal transportation characteristics, infrastructure types, laws, and environmental conditions will all be affected by cyber societal changes.  In terms of interdisciplinary work, economics, design, computer science, cognitive science, social science and environmental science are examples of key research areas in cyber societal change and sustainability