Eligiblity Information
Undergraduate and graduate sudents attending public and private Michigan institutions of higher learning with accredited chemistry and engineering programs programs are elgible to participate in the competition

Eligible Projects
Projects that incorporate one or more of the 12 principles of green chemistry, or one or more of the green engineering principles, both listed on page 5, are eligible to compete in the 2008 Competition. This includes projects that:

1. Have aspects of new design projects that prevent waste generation and eleminate the need for clean up or disposal, the development of new products that are equally or more effective but less toxic, and/or the development of new products with end-of-life-cycle that will degrade to components that are not harmful to the environment.
2. Promote safety through the use of safer solvents and reaction conditions; minimize the potential for accidents, such as explosions or releases into the environment; or the development of real time monitoring processes that eliminate the generation of by-products.
3. Modify processes to operate at ambient temperature and pressure conditions to promote energy efficiency, modify process to use renewable feedstocks, and substitute catalyst for stoichiometric reagents to minimize waste generation. All applications are due no later than 4:00 p.m. Eastern standard time on Thursday, June 19, 2008.

Examples of Green Chemistry Eligible Projects

• The development of an alternate adhesive made from soy flour that replaced conventional formaldehyde-based adhesives. The environmentally friendly adhesive is stronger and cost competitive with conventional adhesives. The new soy-based adhesive replaced more than 47 million pounds of conventional formaldehyde-based adhesives in 2006.
• The development of a new polyurethane foam cushioning material used in furniture or bedding. One of the two chemical building blocks used to make polyurethane is a "polyol," a petroleum base product. Researchers developed polyols manufactured from renewable, biological sources, such as vegetable oils. The new foam is comparable to foams made from conventional polyols. Every million pounds of the polyols used saves nearly 700,000 pounds of crude oil. Additional benefits from the process include, reduced total energy consumption by 23 percent and carbon dioxide emissions by 36 percent.
• The development of a new enzyme that greatly improve the manufacturing process for the key building block of a best-selling drug. The new enzymatic process reduces waste, uses less solvent, requires less processing equipment, and has made measureable improvements over processes used in the past. The process also increases yield and improves worker safety.

Examples of Green Engineering Eligible Projects

• The conversion of a chemical manufacturing process that uses traditional distillation processes to a new reactive process. The advantages of the new process when compared to the traditional process improved selectivity, which reduced raw materials usage and by product(s) generation, enhancement of difficult separations that eliminates or reduces solvent usage, improved reaction rates, and reduced energy usage.
• Researching material substitutions that use a non-hazardous green chemical compound to replace a hazardous substance in manufacturing processes. The material substitution allowed the removal of a chemical process. The change increased operational efficiency, eliminated the generation of a hazardous effluent as a by-product, and promoted human safety due to the removal of the hazardous chemical exposure. The trade-off includes the need for increase operational parameters, primarily more steam, and an increase in energy usage.

Ineligible Projects
Projects that do not incorporate one or more of the 12 principles of green chemistry, or one or more of the green engineering principles will not be considered for the 2008 Competition. This includes projects that are solely pollution prevention oriented, or projects that only emphasies energy effieiceny. Likewise, for projects that only provide benefits to manufacturing or increase monetary profits to industry. All project submittals that arrive after the deadline are ineligible to participate in the 2008 Cometition.

Examples of Ineligible Projects
Researching methods to isolate harmonics in a production scheme to increase the power factor, or conducting a facility wide energy audit to improve electricity consumption at a manufacturing facility.

Reconfiguration of a manufacturing process to install countercurrent rinsing processes, or the use of rinse water for makeup solutions.