Department of Materials

Frequency: Once per Year

Duration: One Week

Date of next course: 13^th to 17^th February 2012

Venue: Loughborough University, Keith Green Building

Cost: £1150 (£1050 for IOM3 and BPF members)

Accommodation:  Not included.

Recommended convenient hotels: Burleigh Court or The Link

Other Information:
Lunches for short course delegates are included, however short course delegates study alongside full-time MSc students and need to organise their own light refreshments outside of lunchtime.

Description

Materials Sustainability and the Environment is an intensive course taught over a one-week period comprising lectures, case studies, group discussions and debate throughout. This course is designed to give you a balanced understanding of the principles of sustainability with regard to resources and materials. It examines the real scientific and engineering issues for effective energy and materials use, with particular reference to recycling of materials from end of life products.

For further information:

Administrative:
Martin White
Telephone: (0) 1509 228592
Email: m.e.white@lboro.ac.uk

Technical:
Dick Heath
Telephone: (0) 1509 223337
Email: r.j.heath@lboro.ac.uk 

This event has been recognised by the Institute of Materials Minerals and Mining for PD.

‘Professional development is the systematic maintenance, improvement and broadening of knowledge and skill, and the development of personal qualities necessary for the execution of professional, managerial and technical duties throughout the practitioner’s working life.’

Disclaimer - Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the details of this course are accurate, Loughborough University Department of Materials reserves the right to alter the course content and/or lecturers if the need should arise.

This course is ideal if you are working in a materials based industry and need an overview understanding of sustainability and environmental issues relative to the materials used, method of processing, waste management and recycling.

The course content ranges from the social and political needs for recycling waste materials, particularly from non-renewable resources, waste management statistics and legislation, through to methods for improving the quality of the environment, recycling and minimising landfill. The course also considers environmental auditing issues, economics of mixed waste materials, alternative strategies for waste management including source reduction, recycling, re-use, energy recovery and the need to design products with these issues in mind.

In this way you and your company will benefit from being able to:

• Understand terminology and legislation, which is currently evolving in this area.
• Choose the most appropriate methods for waste management, with social / economic / ecological justification.
• Use life cycle assessment principles as a basis for environmental auditing, to calculate an “index of merit” for waste management options.
• Choose appropriate methods of recycling for products and components not commonly recycled. E.g. using non-melt processing methods.
• Outline the likely changes to material’s properties from different recycling methods.
• Confidently discuss and identify requirements with suppliers, customers and workplace colleagues.
• Demonstrate the ability to think laterally and solve new problems in this subject area, through the theory and case studies and via the mini-project.

Throughout the week you will have ample opportunity to clarify these issues and your specific interests in one-to-one free-time discussions with the lecturers. Our main aim is to give you the knowledge, understanding and confidence that you need to develop your role within your company.

Course Programme

• Introduction, Overview and Terminology
• Statistics: Petrochemical and Plastics
• Fuel and Energy Resources
• Resources: Water, Energy, Oil, Minerals: Extraction and Recovery
• Metal Resources
• Source Reduction
• Product Take-Back and Recovery, Legislation and Implications
• Packaging EMS and Environmental Law Including Legal Aspects of Labelling and Products
• Primary Recycling (Mechanical Recycling): Re-Use, Melt Reprocessing, Powder / Crumb Recycling.
• Secondary Recycling (Chemical Recycling)
• Tertiary recycling (Energy Recovery)
• Landfill. Biomaterials and Recycling
• Introduction to Life Cycle Assessment
• Case Studies

Case studies relating real-life activities to the lecture content are scattered throughout the week, e.g.

• Recycling of PVC packaging into long-life products
• Recycling polymers in cars – Problems and solutions
• Recycling of polyurethane foam
• Recycling of aluminium and steel cans
• Recycling of lead / acid car batteries

The lecturers are Loughborough University and Industry based. In this way we ensure that the key elements relevant to industry are brought out and developed.

Dick Heath – Course organiser - Senior Lecturer in Polymer Technology in The Department of Materials, with a long term interest in the environment and materials recycling, reactive polymer processing (PU’s, Thermasols, Composites) and Surface Technology.

Rebecca Higginson - Senior Lecturer in Metallurgy in The Department of Materials. Her research work centres on the sustainable use of materials both during metal processing and through life time prediction of service material, particularly related to power generation applications.

Barry Haworth – Senior Lecturer in Polymer Technology in The Department of Materials, with a special interest in polymer processing and recycling of packaging materials.

Shahin Rahimifard – Professor of Sustainable Engineering in The School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, with interests in sustainability issues in Life Cycle Engineering. Including sustainable product design, environmentally conscious manufacturing, sustainable business and consumption models, product end-of-life management, recovery, reuse and recycling technologies.

Hilary Stone – Specialist in environmental law. Originally a lawyer in private practice specialising in advising corporate clients on environmental issues and currently an honorary research fellow at Imperial College, London and a visiting lecturer in environmental law and waste topics at Brunel University.

Laurence Clift – Research Fellow at the Ergonomics and Safety Research Institute. Areas of interest include the effectiveness of instructions, warnings and labelling, the impact of consumer legislation, the limitations of ergonomics as a working discipline and the perversity of humans when using products and services.

Plus other industrial based speakers, to be confirmed….