Materials Development Template - DRAFT

Description / Goal: Created draft page for a materials research specific development template. Plan is to fill out the below using several examples including the one I started with "Aluminum from Clay". The template is raw material focused with room for multiple potential methods for obtaining and processing feeder material to create usable raw materials such as Aluminum. One idea, for example, is to include information about the specific regional availability of feedstock materials in order to make initial decisions such as to whether to include societal waste materials (recycling) as one of the potentially viable methods of production, among other considerations. Once I get this thing fleshed out (working full time so may take a couple of weeks) I will vet it on the forums to see what people think. If all goes well, we could have this available for adoption for anyone working on basic raw material research and people could link to the template from the material category pages. Very rough (back of napkin) draft follows:

Material Template Draft:

• Primary materials produced (goal):
• Secondary materials produced (beneficial by products):
• Feed materials required:
  • Material availability:
  • Material sustainability:
  • Material procurement methods (can be multiple for eval):
    • Procurement method risks:
      • Environmental:
      • Health:
    • Procurement method specific challenges: (e.g. separation of A from B = most energy intensive)
    • Procurement method energy required:
• Processing to base material (methods - can be multiple for eval with multiple step entries per process):
  • Materials required for process (e.g. chemicals):
    • Process materials availability:
    • Process materials risks: e.g. toxicity etc.
  • Process energy required:
  • Process Patent / Open Source considerations:
• Anticipated Material characteristics per production method (used for things like textiles or concrete)
  • e.g. tensile strength, compressive strength, etc.
• Considerations for working materials
  • e.g. casting temperatures, agitation processes, etc.