Sustainable construction materials selection

D. Anink, J. Mak and C. Boonstra, Handbook of Sustainable Building An Environmental Preference Method for Selection of Materials for Use in Construction and Refurbishment, 2nd Edition, James James Science Publishers, London, UK, 1998. 

While high isotope conversion factors are desirable in many instances, in other cases simplicity of construction and care of handling the materials involved can be more important. The present application is therefore primarily directed toward the provision of a simply constructed 60 isotope converter wherein the active materials are in solid form, can be easily cooled in place, and easily re-mov for processing, and replaced with fresh material. It will be understood that the selection of fissionable materials, moderator materials and fertile materials, the 65 relative amounts thereof and the critical size of the reactive composition required to produce a self-sustaining chain reaction, are not in themselves the subject of the present invention. These criteria are now familiar to persons skilled in the art The invention is concerned 70 with a novel construction which may be employed with any of the various combinations of materials which are already well known. 

Enzymes have long been known to be efficient catalysts [1-3]. In particular, they are admired for selectivity, fast rates, and low activation energies. When considering applications that require sustainability and scalability, enzymes also have the advantage of being constructed exclusively from earth-abundant, bioavailable materials. Thus metalloenzymes typically employ only earth-abundant metals... 

Chapter 1 discloses the environmental applications of multifunctional nanocomposite catalytic materials, the preparation of various combinations of materials with two or more distinct catalytic functionalities and application of these in three different cases which are relevant to environmental and sustainable catalysis viz. (i) coupling NO storage systems with urea hydrolysis and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalysts, (ii) constructing a material that would act as a four-way catalyst, and (iii) studies on the generation of a material to promote selective oxidation of an organic molecule using synthesized in situ from H /O mixtures. This is an example of an attempt to couple two heterogeneously catalyzed reactions (in an atom efficient and clean manner) to replace other reactions that would be considered environmentally troublesome. 

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