Research Analysts from Argonne National Laboratory Present at CIVS Seminar

On September 27, CIVS welcomed Dr. Doris Oke and Dr. Saurajyoti Kar from Argonne National Laboratory to be our guest speakers at the weekly CIVS Seminar held in the CIVS Immersive Theater. Drs. Oke and Kar are Energy Systems Analysts in the Energy Systems and Infrastructure Analysis division. Attendees included CIVS students and staff, PNW College of Engineering students and staff, and external industry collaborators.

Their seminar was titled “Life Cycle Assessment: Concept, Methods and Applications”. The urgency to reduce climate change and its impact has led to increased research efforts on alternative technologies that can reduce emissions across different sectors of the economy. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an important technique to quantify the environmental impacts of entire life cycle of a product. As various options for decarbonization emerge, (LCA) continues to be a relevant tool to provide comprehensive and objective assessment of their environmental impacts and sustainability in comparison to the baseline fossil technologies. This seminar covered the general concept about LCA, the methodologies and applications and provide a glimpse of the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Technologies (GREET) LCA modeling tool developed and maintained at Argonne National Laboratory.  Excellent feedback was received from the audience.

Both Dr. Kar and Dr. Oke are team members in our DOE IEDO $10 million project to develop and demonstrate H2 as a fuel in a commercial reheating furnace for steelmaking.