Development of a Sustainability-Oriented Decision-Making Framework and Computational Tool for Energetic and Critical Material Evaluations

The modern world faces many challenges related to sustainability, including the ability to make high-level decisions using a sustainability-oriented framework, a matter of increasing importance to the United States military with respect to energetic materials (EMs). Although a few pieces - process flowsheet optimization, life cycle assessment (LCA) studies, and the use of optimization tools to identify an option - have been studied and utilized, there exists no systematic approach that combines all these pieces to create a framework that allows for holistic decision making. This is especially true with EMs, other key critical materials, and new methods of manufacture. An interconnected framework for LCA-based decision making is developed and a tool based on this framework created for use with novel materials. The interconnected framework and tool are utilized in two case studies related to the manufacture of RDX- a lab-scale, batch-mode configuration and a simplified continuous-mode configuration, to determine the optimal reaction temperature.