Process engineering and MMC: a Design to Value approach

Intumescent paint has to be manually chipped off steelwork before it can be recycled or reused, so choosing to use boarding for fire protection is a better sustainable design choice.

Carbon Capture and Utilisation vs Carbon Capture and Storage.There are two main methods of carbon capture: carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The difference between them is that CCS takes the CO. 2. ,.and stores it to be sold on to whoever needs it later, whereas CCU reuses the collected CO. 2. almost immediately.There are benefits to both systems, but CCU has less potential for wasted carbon dioxide.

Both methods have been used at commercial scale with ‘undisputable technical and operational success for decades’ in the North Sea, North America, Australia and elsewhere.Naturally, this isn’t a closed loop; feedstock will always need to be provided.

But given that, as of 2019, carbon feedstock equated to 58% of the usage of carbon-based materials like crude oil and other fossil fuels in the industry, it would be a positive step to use carbon capture to reduce the amount required, and therefore begin to lower the carbon footprint of the industrial plastic produced using these methods..

Chemicals such as formaldehyde and potassium carbonate that are used in the production of plastics such as PEEK, POM, PTFE, and PVDF can be produced with captured carbon dioxide instead of fresh carbon feedstock.The Platforms approach to construction uses standard components for buildings that can be assembled in a number of ways, depending on the purpose of the building.

But because they’re standardised, these parts can be disassembled and reassembled relatively easily within the superstructure.The inherent agility of Platform construction means that final decisions on configuration can be made much later in the process than in traditional construction, allowing for change, if necessary, during design and build..

The use of the same components across sectors allows the possibility of repurposing buildings – so an office block can later be turned into residential with relatively little intervention.. Digital design makes it all possible.In all of this, digital is our strongest ally.