Background
     More than 30 billion pounds of organic and halogenated solvents are used worldwide each year as process aids, cleaning agents and dispersants. Considerably more water is used and contaminated in related processes. In the 21^st Century, manufacturing and service industries must increasingly attempt to avoid production, use and subsequent release into our environment of contaminated water, volatile organic solvents, chlorofluorocarbons and other noxious pollutants. Technological breakthroughs of the last decade now indicate that liquid and supercritical carbon dioxide (CO₂) could become a very commonly-used solvent in overcoming these environmental problems. Many of these breakthroughs have been led by Science and Technology Center researchers who have made seminal discoveries in these areas. The S&T Center for Environmentally Responsible Solvents and Processes has as its goal to establish the scientific fundamentals necessary to enable liquid and supercritical CO₂ and solvent-free processes to replace aqueous and organic solvents in a large number of key processes in our Nation’s manufacturing sector. This is a multi-disciplinary effort with participants from five academic centers and two national laboratories: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, North Carolina A&T University, University of Texas at Austin and the Georgia Institute of Technology  in partnership with Sandia National

back to top

Goals of the center

The NSF Science and Technology Center for Environmentally Responsible Solvents and Processes will provide collaborative and innovative in research, undergraduate and graduate training, industrial outreach and educational outreach designed to:

While the primary focus of the Center is science and engineering, we recognize the opportunity and responsibility to contribute to social and economic development. We plan to continually monitor and report the impact of our science in those two key areas. In order to maximize that impact, we plan to benchmark other Science and Technology Centers, with assistance from NSF, to identify “best practices” and to apply those to operations in our Center. To be most efficient, we need to complete that benchmarking within the first year so that we can implement those practices from the beginning and not “reinvent the wheel.” Further, we will implement standard continuous processes as a quality assurance measure for our Center.

back to top