Sustainable Manufacturing

The Sustainable Manufacturing theme is focused on investigating and implementing informed change to ensure sustainable improvement across the life cycle of societies products and services.

Focus of our research

As a newly developing theme within the university, we are rapidly growing and building our offerings and expertise. As such the information on this page is by no means exhaustive, so please get in touch if you have any interest which aligns to the wider themes objectives and believe you would benefit from our collaborative approach to the challenges of sustainable manufacturing.

If you wish to find out more about this theme, please get in contact with our theme lead Dr Stephen Spooner.

• Our vision

  Through implementing data driven solutions and quantifying the systems effects, we aim to support industrial partners to implement directed changes in their processes for meaningful and viable sustainable improvement.

• Our mission

  To improve understanding of sustainable manufacturing across the social, public and private sector, delivering rapid change to societies acceptance of sustainability claims and enabling targeted intervention on the time scales important to people, industry and the global environment.

Key researchers

Dr Stephen Spooner, Theme lead

Stephen is the theme lead for Sustainable Manufacturing and is passionate about sustainable development being a driving force for social parity and opportunity at the same time as shifting technologies used to more sustainable options. With a background in chemistry, materials, sustainable technologies, and life-cycle-analysis, he puts an emphasis on bringing together a collaborative team of experts to ensure sustainable manufacturing methods are suitable and optimised to perform as well as possible within an extended manufacturing system.

Dr Masoumeh Faraji, Assistant Professor

Masoumeh, with a PhD in Engineering Materials from the University of Sheffield awarded in 2007, has extensive research experience in metal manufacturing processes, including casting, thermomechanical processing, and welding technologies. She is currently an assistant professor in sustainable manufacturing and materials in Coventry University, working on optimisation of metal processing through process modelling and utilising advanced characterisation techniques. She is focused on developing sustainable thermomechanical processes to manufacture and extend service life of advanced structural steel components for energy applications.

Projects

Clean Futures Accelerator

A collaboration between CPC, BCIMO and CU (funded by the WMCA, facilitated by Innovate UK), this project looks to accelerate the contribution of the west midland’s region to the decarbonisation of rail and automotive travel while encouraging economic growth within the region. Along side the accelerator a community catalyst is being developed to cluster and support technology and business development aligned to impacting the delivery of a future sustainable manufacturing economy for the region.

Recovery and valorisation of foundation industry coproducts

Foundation industries (metal, glass, chemical, paper and cement production) function on scales which dwarf the independent activities of most other sectors. This project is working to find recovery and novel utilisation methods of the diverse range of resources produced along side the core manufacturing streams of these industries, including, as examples, heat, refining mediums, off-gases, and contaminated consumables.

Enabling high value recycling routes for resource and manufacturing sovereignty.

Access to the raw materials for both large volume and high value products is key to the development and dispersion of next generation manufacturing across the globe. Within this project societies end-of-life products and waste streams are explored to detect, recover, and develop utilisation pathways of strategic products and materials to enable the retention of value and manufacturing capability within geographical and political territories.

Quantifying and rationalising ESG for actionable investor and consumer decision making.

Multifaceted life-cycle-analysis across environmental, economic and social factors is fast becoming a significant tool for decision making for process and product development, as well as for informing consumer choice. This project is developing a range of tool to quantify sustainability credentials through understanding not only the capturing of data required to conduct comparative calculations, but the quality of that data for outputs to be meaningful at the cutting edge of developing sustainability understanding.