Resumen de Developing Students’ Understanding of Industrially Relevant Economic and Life Cycle Assessments

Claudia J. Bode, Clint Chapman, Atherly Pennybaker, Bala Subramaniam

• Training future leaders to understand life cycle assessment data is critical for effective research, business, and sociopolitical decision-making. However, the technical nature of these life cycle reports often makes them challenging for students and other nonexperts to comprehend. Therefore, we outline here the key takeaways from recent economic and life cycle assessments for three major commodity chemicals—ethylene, ethylene oxide, and terephthalic acid—that are precursors for plastics, synthetic fibers, and many other consumer products. The five lessons and 10 discussion prompts (provided in the Supporting Information) serve as useful teaching tools for introductory chemistry and chemical engineering courses.