Sustainable manufacturing conference in South Africa highlights importance of materials
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Sustainable manufacturing conference in South Africa highlights importance of materials By Rachel Berkowitz
W
e humans use a lot of stuff. Indeed, a January headline from Science News observed that “humans have created 50 kilograms of things for every square meter of Earth’s surface.” In a world with finite resources and growing populations, this statistic indicates the scale of the impact that increased consumption poses, and illustrates the necessity of doing more with less. The First International Conference on Sustainable Materials Processing and Manufacturing in South Africa was designed to address this concern. Organized by Professors Esther Akinlabi and Tien-Chien Jen of the Mechanical Engineering Department
at the University of Johannesburg, this meeting brought together industry and academic talent from around the world to Kruger National Park in South Africa on January 23–25, 2017, to exchange ideas on sustainable development. The United Nations defines sustainability as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” At the conference, a diverse mix of students, professors, and industry professionals shared new materials research projects that address clean energy systems, corrosion resistance, machining processes, and clean water. In her welcoming speech, the Hon. Angela Thokozile Didiza, elected member in the 5th Parliament of the Republic a of South Africa, said, “2016 marked an important milestone in our world when for the first time the outcomes of the negotiations on Climate Change were finally made operational. It has been a long road since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit convened by the United Nations in which the discussions were not only b environmentally based, but rather ensuring that development is undertaken in a sustainable way.” Specific needs and sustainability challenges vary regionally, as do the resources available to meet these challenges. While research and manufacturing powerhouses are the repositories of general knowledge that can inform (a) Plastic-derived and (b) commercially produced zirconium metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), UiO-66 (Zr). In local efforts, local problems (a), the organic linker molecule component of the MOF, often benefit from solutions 1,4-benzenedicarboxylic acid, is derived from recycled tailored to their region. And poly(ethylene terephthalate). Credit: Jianwei Ren.
small-scale regional innovation can spread to have a global effect. “For us to find answers to these and many other questions, we … need to invest in basic and applied research,” Didiza said in her opening remarks. “Research remains vital to national and global prosperity and it is an important indicator of the global stature of a nation.” Results discussed at the conference included new ways to store hydrogen for use in energy production, technologies that make use of byproducts of mineral mining, ideas for how plant-based fluids can be used in metal manufacturing, and ways to provide clean water for Nigeria. But th
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