SUN - Sustainable Nanomaterials

SUN is a large EU-FP7 research program organized in a consortium of 35 partners belonging to the industry, SME (Small and Medium Enterprises), research and academia sectors, coordinated by the Università Ca’Foscari of Venice, Italy. It is the first project that addresses the entire lifecycle of nanotechnologies to make a holistic nanosafety evaluation to develop tools and guidelines for sustainable manufacturing, easily accessible by industries, regulators and other stakeholders. The project will build over scientific findings of more than 30 European projects, national and international research programs and transatlantic cooperation to develop:

 

  •  Methods and tools to predict nanomaterials exposure and effects on humans and ecosystems;
  •  Implementable processes to reduce hazard and exposure to nanomaterials in different lifecycle stages;    Innovative technological solutions for risk management in industrial settings, and
  • Guidance on best practices for securing both nano-manufacturing processes and nanomaterials ultimate fate, including development of approaches for safe disposal and recycling.

In summary, SUN stands for an integrated approach for the long-term sustainability of nanotechnologies through the development of safe processes for production, use and end-of-life processing of nanomaterials and products, as well as methods reducing both adverse effects and exposure to acceptable levels.

 

EMPA coordinates Work Package 3 “Environmental Release, Fate and Exposure” (WP3), whose main goals are to develop:

  • Validated tools to collect NOAA1 released from products;
  • Methods to analyse and characterize NOAA released from actual products;
  • Modelling tools to predict release and transformation of NOAA over the whole lifecycle, and
  • Provide released and aged materials for (eco)toxicological studies.

 

Publications

Caballero-Guzman, A.; Nowack, B. (2016) A critical review of engineered nanomaterial release data: are current data useful for material flow modeling? Environ. Pollut. 213: 502-517. (pdf)

Caballero-Guzman, A.; Sun, T. Y.; Nowack, B. (2015) Flows of engineered nanomaterials through the recycling process in Switzerland. Waste Management 36: 33–43. pdf


Contact 

Prof. Dr. Bernd Nowack 

Empa
Technology & Society Laboratory
Lerchenfeldstrasse 5
CH-9014 St. Gallen
Tel.: +41 58 765 76 92

nowack@empa.ch



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