GEES 2008: Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and Masters Level Teaching

1. GEES 2008: Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and Masters Level Teaching Colin Trier, Environmental Science Programme, University of Plymouth

2. Introduction • Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with local companies • Implementation of the Environmental Management System ISO14001 standard • Developed an EMS case study for the MSc Sustainable Environmental Management • Case studies like this can bridge a gap between academia and business (the employability gap?)

3. What is the KTP Scheme? • Partnership between a university and a local business (SME) • Funding mediated through a Government department such as DEFRA or a Regional Development Agency • Enables the 2 year employment of a Research Associate • http://www.ktponline.org.uk/

4. KTP and the Environment • Focus on improving the environmental performance of a company • Environmental concerns are rarely the core business • Recent exponential rise in environmental costs • Increasing burdens imposed by EU/UK environmental legislation and regulation • Formal process for improving environmental performance: an Environmental Management System accredited to the ISO14001 standard.

5. What are the Benefits? • From the university side the need for staff to update their knowledge and experience. Potential for a fruitful two-way learning experience • The best continual professional development opportunity (CPD)? • Strong beneficial impact on teaching

6. Why Build Relationships With Local Industry? • Masters students represent the higher achievers • Many of them come directly from undergraduate courses • Undergraduate courses have had constant pressure to limit field work • Field visits to the most polluting industries sites have become increasingly rare • Health & Safety culture, commercial sensitivities, costs and large group size • Masters students have much theoretical but little practical experience of the most polluting industries

7. What Kind of Knowledge Do the MSc SEM Students Need? • To bridge the gap between student experience and the wider world of industry without having site visits • The in depth involvement as a KTP supervisor has yielded experience to develop case studies on the practical implementation of EMS • To engage the student interest at a deeper level

8. A Brief Explanation of EMS Focusing on Significant Aspects • ISO 14001 defines an EMS as: • "The part of the overall management system that includes organisational structure, planning activities, responsibilities, practices, procedures, processes and resources for developing, implementing, achieving, reviewing and maintaining the environmental policy" • A comprehensive review of all the activities of the company • To identify any aspects that might have an impact on the environment • Ranked in terms of significance based on magnitude of hazard and frequency of occurrence in normal, abnormal and emergency circumstances.

9. Chartered Environmentalist Perspective • When I walk around an industrial site I am constantly making observations and identifying potentially significant environmental aspects. • A key skill for the professional environmental scientist working in this field • How can one develop this skill in students? • Many students have great difficulty in this process • The primary objective of case studies to develop student skill in indentifying and ranking environmental aspects of a business.

10. A Brief Illustration: • The case study based on a local company producing retread truck tyres • The company manages the tyre performance and replacement for almost 65% of all the grocery deliveries within the UK. • See Spring 2008 newsletter • And Environmental Policy • http://www.bandvulc.com/EnvironmentalPolicy.aspx

11. What Aspects of The Business Have Potential Environmental Impacts? • Starting point for workshop case study • I invite the ex KTP associate plus an engineer friend who co-supervised the KTP with me, to join the workshop. • This additional multi perspective input from external professionals is a great help in bringing the case study to life. • The pedagogy of so many current teaching agendas, e.g. ESD, emphasises the importance of process as much as content and this is no more true than in a case study approach like the one described here.

12. Bandvulc is a Leading Retreader for Truck Tyres • 3500 tyres produced per week (170,000 per annum) • Huge energy and resource savings involved when compared with new tyres.

13. Environmental Benefits of Retread Tyres • DATA

14. Step By Step Description of the Manufacturing Process

16. Used Tyres Manually Sorted • Stage 1 Visual Inspection • To remove worst casings that cannot be processed, looking gross defects e.g. ?

18. Shearography • This involves testing for casing failures not visible to the naked eye. Casings passed along a conveyor with negative vacuum applied; series of images taken are superimposed to spot any changes.

21. Buffing Stage • Old rubber removed from face of tyre for retread to have clean surface. Also side of tyre is buffed to remove old manufacturer’s information. This step can generate fine tyre crumb in atmosphere. Situation is controlled by extraction system with rubber dust recovered for recycling using electrostatic precipitator

26. Tyre Spraying • Adhesive is sprayed onto tyre casings to activate surface and give extra ‘tack’. • Xylene solvent is used and annual consumption is 48,000 litres (41.5 tonnes pa).

30. Building • Physical placing of new rubber tread around old casing. • Some failure can occur of part cured rubber which is rejected

32. Press • High pressure (with an internal bladder inflated to 15 bar) provided by compressed air and high temperature (150-200C) provided by steam, welds new rubber to old casing in a batch process taking 65 minutes to complete. • External moulding determines external pattern on tyre

37. Peeling • A mainly cosmetic requirement that takes off any excess rubber around the edges of the new tyre. Generates scrap rubber.

39. Product Storage • 10,000 casings maximum stored under cover • 20,000 old tyres waiting retreading, stored outside in yard. 68,700 total scrap casings/year

41. Additional Information for Case Study • Energy and Water • Resources • Waste • Transport • Office

42. Energy • Gas boiler for steam • Four compressors providing compressed air (only two used at any one time) at approximately 11 or 12 bar. On the press line only a booster pushes this up to 15 bar for the press. • Buffing uses four 35 kw motors plus two 70kwh extractor fans • Electricity and Gas annual bill £400,000

44. Water Consumption and Effluent Discharge • 40% loss of water as steam during the process but the effluents discharged are not contaminated and there is only a £7,000 annual bill

45. Resources In • Natural rubber and Carbon Black (high grade), these are bought in a master batch already mixed; £3,000,000 annual bill. A lot of the natural rubber comes from Malaysia but the price is constantly going up because of a shortage brought about by the transfer of agricultural resources from rubber plantations to palm oil. • Silica • Polybutyldiene? • Solvent SB2 (?) annual consumption (?) cut by half this last year?

46. Waste • Powdered rubber, 29 tonnes per week (down from 40 tonnes last year), is recycled back into the master batch to manufacturing at a maximum of 3-5%. Scrap casing are transported to Birmingham where Charles Lawrenson granulates them for use in playground surfaces.

49. Transport • Fuel consumption 500,000 litres of diesel per annum