Grantee Research Project Results

2014 Progress Report: NCCLC: Network for Rapid Assessment of Chemical Life Cycle Impact

EPA Grant Number: R835579
Title: NCCLC: Network for Rapid Assessment of Chemical Life Cycle Impact
Investigators: Suh, Sangwon , Keller, Arturo A. , Doherty, Michael , Doherty, Michael , Seshadri, Ram , Scott, Susannah
Current Investigators: Suh, Sangwon , Keller, Arturo A. , Scott, Susannah , Seshadri, Ram , Doherty, Michael
Institution: University of California - Santa Barbara
EPA Project Officer: Aja, Hayley
Project Period: December 1, 2013 through November 30, 2017 (Extended to November 30, 2019)
Project Period Covered by this Report: December 3, 2013 through December 2,2014
Project Amount: $4,887,644
RFA: EPA/NSF Networks for Characterizing Chemical Life Cycle (NCCLCs) (2013) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Chemical Safety for Sustainability

Objective:

The objective of the project is to develop an open-access, online tool to evaluate life-cycle impacts for chemicals and materials at an early stage of the chemical product development process, when the precise manufacturing routes and fates of the products are still uncertain. Specifically, the tool will (1) enable rapid, high-throughput screening of life-cycle impacts for new chemicals; (2) provide a platform for accessing, generating and sharing information on the life-cycle impacts of chemicals; and (3) expand life cycle thinking in emerging professionals, high school students and the general public through highly accessible, targeted modules.

Progress Summary:

The Chemical Life Cycle Collaborative (CLiCC) Tool, an open-access, online tool, is being developed to evaluate life-cycle impacts for chemicals and materials at an early stage of the chemical product development process, when the precise manufacturing routes and fates of the products are still uncertain. Specifically, the CLiCC Tool will (1) enable rapid, high-throughput screening of life-cycle impacts for new chemicals; (2) provide a platform for accessing, generating and sharing information on the life-cycle impacts of chemicals; and (3) expand life cycle thinking in emerging professionals, high school students and the general public through highly accessible, targeted modules. Participants from a range of established and start-up companies will conduct pilot studies using a beta version of the CLiCC Tool, providing feedback on its effectiveness, ease of use, and need for further improvements.

Intellectual merit. The project is conducted by a multidisciplinary team of experts, representing life cycle assessment (LCA); electronic database development; fate, transport and toxicity modeling; chemical engineering and chemical process design; sustainable chemistry; and materials science. The CLiCC Tool will be a crystallization of cutting-edge approaches from each of these fields, and will include (a) parametric LCA, (b) process unit operations combined with Feinberg's Theorem for chemical process design, (c) multimedia fugacity-based fate and transport models, (d) quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs), and (e) large-scale database development and processing. The CLiCC Tool will use common data exchange protocols to efficiently extract information from existing databases such as Integrated Risk Assessment System, Aggregated Computational Toxicology Resource (ACToR), NIST Chemistry WebBook, TOXNET, eChemPortal, ToxCast, Cambridge Structural Database, REACH Database, and ZINC database, which together contain information on tens of millions of chemicals. The field knowledge and experience of the industry partners will ensure the relevance of the output.

Broader impacts. Modern societies generate and mobilize chemicals of enormous diversity and quantity. However, our understanding of the life-cycle environmental impacts of chemicals and materials has not kept pace with new discoveries, or with the production scale of chemicals. Development of a rapid, early stage tool to evaluate life-cycle impacts is expected to have broad relevance to many key stakeholders:

(1) The private sector, where toxicity testing and LCAs are expensive and time-consuming, representing a significant cost burden and a liability, because incomplete understanding of the life-cycle impacts of their products increases the risk of civil and regulatory measures. The CLiCC Tool will help chemical producers understand potential environmental and human health consequences at an early stage of design, enabling informed decisions about design choices.

(2) Research, where the lack of publicly available data on life cycle impacts of chemicals has been a serious impediment in implementing regulations and conducting research on new chemicals and materials. The CLiCC Tool will provide an open-access platform for developing and sharing new data on the life-cycle impacts of chemicals.

(3) Human health and the environment, where widespread use of the CLiCC Tool will help to minimize human health and environmental risks by enabling the design of inherently safer chemicals starting at an early stage of product development.

(4) Future chemical workforce development, via the active participation of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the Network, their engagement in industry-academic partnerships, internships, and international experiences.

(5) Education of the public, via accessible modules designed for use by high school students and the general public.

The center currently has nine distinct projects, all staffed and operational: Data Design & Architecture; Chemical Process Design Module; Predictive Life Cycle Inventory Module; Environmental Release Module; Predictive Models for Chemical Characteristics and Impacts Module; Fate and Transport Module; Material Screening Based on Economic, Resource Availability and Energy Module; Application and Use of the CLiCC Tool; and Policy considerations of CLiCC Tool.

Future Activities:

A number of models are being developed in the corresponding modules and they will be evaluated.

Journal Articles:

No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 34 publications for this project

Supplemental Keywords:

risk assessment, ecological effects, human health, bioavailability, carcinogen, toxics, scaling, green chemistry, life-cycle analysis, alternatives, sustainable development, clean technologies, environmentally conscious manufacturing, public policy, decision making, environmental chemistry, modeling

Progress and Final Reports:

Original Abstract

The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.