http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14676370710726634International audienceOwing to its complexity, sustainable development (SD) cannot be simply integrated as a supplementary course within the engineer's curricula. The first aim of this paper is to focus on how to reflect pedagogically this complexity. After dealing with these questions, the paper aims to present a tool that can evaluate the student's understanding of SD concepts
PurposeOwing to its complexity, sustainable development cannot be simply integrated as a supplementary course within the engineers' curricula. The first point of this paper aims to focalise on how to reflect pedagogically. After dealing with these questions, a tool that can evaluate the student's understanding of sustainable development concepts will be presented.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis of a student's sustainability comprehension, based on cognitive maps, has been developed. The students are asked to write and connect by arrows all the terms that they associate with the concept of sustainable development. The assessment of the aforementioned cognitive maps is based on an approach via semantic category.FindingsThis study shows that the students' perception of sustainable development before the training seems mainly focalised on environmental and economical aspects. After the SD course, an increase in the number of words quoted is noted for each category (social and cultural aspects; the stakeholders, the principles of sustainable development and the allusions to complexity, temporal and spatial dimensions). Their vision seems richer and wider. The training seemed useful to help the students who did not associate sustainable development with diverse dimension to improve this perception.Research limitations/implicationsTo reduce the length of the elaboration of the maps, there is no preliminary training for the construction of maps. To simplify this elaboration, only one type of arrows is used to connect words. To minimise the time of analysis of the maps, the relevance of the relations made between the words is not verified. Besides, the classification of words within the semantic categories implies a certain level of subjectivity.Practical implicationsThis cognitive map method can be a useful tool to improve learning in quantitative terms but also in qualitative terms. Identifying knowledge gaps and misunderstood ideas allows the improvement in the training.Originality/valueThis study presents a new method that can be used to evaluate the impact of training sessions on students. Another advantage is to analyse how the students' knowledge is interconnected. This seems particularly interesting because the study of this transdisciplinary concept also necessitates an integrated vision.
International audienceA proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell, an alternative to combustion processes that consume fossil resources, is used to convert energy stored in the form of hydrogen into electricity. The membrane-electrode assembly (MEA), the core of this system, contains platinum, a noble metal, which is a limited resource. This paper presents an environmental assessment of a recycling process for the platinum catalyst contained in the MEA of a PEM fuel cell. During this study, four hydrometallurgical platinum recovery processes from Pt/C particles have been developed at the laboratory scale. The considered process alternatives are composed of the four following steps: leaching, separation, precipitation and filtration. Approximately 76% of the platinum can be recovered as [NH4]2PtCl6 salt using the most efficient process alternatives. In this case, platinum leaching is carried out with a mixture of H2O2 and HCl, followed by liquid/liquid platinum extraction and a precipitation step.The environmental assessment was performed using the SimaPro 8 tool coupled with the EcoInvent 3.1 database. The environmental impacts were estimated for a 25 cm2 active area MEA considering the production and end-of-life stages of the MEA life-cycle using the CML-IA baseline V3.02 method. The results show that more than half of the main impacts of the MEA life-cycle can be avoided for four relevant impact categories if platinum is recovered in the end-of-life of the product
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