Ezra's Round Table / Systems Seminar: Rui Shi (Penn State)

Description

Advancing Sustainability Through Systems Analysis:  Decision-making under Uncertainty

Life cycle assessment has been widely used in engineering systems for resource and environmental impacts analysis. A core challenge with LCA is that the uncertainty across different analyses appear to be large, especially in the evaluations of early-stage technologies. The large uncertainty stem from assumptions about scale-up, design parameters, application scenarios, unit operation performance, and inventory data. Inventory data are often left static or varied one at a time. Additionally, the lack of integration between environmental sustainability and economic feasibility is a barrier to early-stage process evaluations, reducing consistency and transparency across sustainability indicators while limiting our understanding of the trade-offs. We propose an agile LCA framework to characterize the environmental impacts of engineering systems across a landscape of scenarios and contexts under uncertainty. The implications of uncertainties throughout the production system are characterized via Monte Carlo simulation and key drivers can be identified through global sensitivity analysis. This enabled us to elucidate tradeoffs and synergies across the development pipeline of energy systems (e.g., biofuels and bioproducts, waste-to-energy, etc.), and can be applied in many engineering designs to evaluate a variety of processes, the production of candidate products, and trade-offs among productivity, economics, and environmental impacts under uncertainty.

Bio:
Rui Shi is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the Pennsylvania State University with a join appointment in the Institutes of Energy and the Environment. Her education and research have always been centered on systems analysis, with current work focused on life cycle assessment, sustainable design, and system optimization. Her group develops agile sustainability assessment tools that are being applied to a variety of emerging technologies. Research efforts are dedicated to the development of engineering systems for biofuels and bioproducts, advanced materials and food products, and waste-to-energy. Her research has been sponsored by a number of agencies including the NSF, the U.S. DOE, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the REMADE Institute.  Besides research, Rui is passionate about science communication, she had also worked with multiple international organizations and NGOs on sustainable development topics.