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Contact: Joe King, Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-4299

Nov. 16, 2004

NIU gets grant to study "green" manufacturing

DeKALB, Ill.—The Manufacturing Systems Research Group of the NIU College of Engineering and Engineering Technology has received a $100,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to focus on environmentally conscious manufacturing.

Nourredine Boubekri, a professor of industrial engineering and director of manufacturing research, innovation and training at CEET, secured the grant and is principal investigator on the project with Behrooz Fallahi from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Their aim is to investigate the effectiveness of mico-lubrication in machining and the resulting environmental and health effects.

Specifically, their work will focus on reducing the amount of cutting fluid used in machining operations. More than 100 million gallons of metal working fluids are used in the United States each year, exposing about 1.2 million employees to potential health hazards. According to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, such exposure may result in a variety of respiratory disorders, including asthma and hypersensitivity pneumonitis and may also cause conditions such as dermatitis and cancer.

The research is of particular importance in Illinois, where metal-cutting industries account for about 37 percent of the state’s manufacturing sector, but also could have implications in the metal-cutting industry worldwide.

“There is a definite need to lead research efforts in this area in our college and at NIU,” Boubekri said. “This is a truly multidisciplinary field of research that encompasses machining science, environmental issues and health research issues.”

Because of the wide range of issues involved, Boubekri six months ago formed a group of faculty and students from the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology, and the mathematics and physics departments to collaborate on a number of competitive proposals in this arena. The grant from the Waste Management Research Center is the result of the first proposal submitted by that group.

The long-term plan of the group is to collaborate with faculty from departments across NIU in order to establish this as a multidisciplinary area of research excellence that can be sustained. To achieve that goal, the group is focusing its efforts on securing competitive funding and collaborating with a number of companies and laboratories including Ingersoll Inc., Caterpillar Corporation, and the EIGERlab in Rockford.

Before joining NIU as department chair two years ago, Boubekri founded and co-directed the University of Miami Industrial Assessment Center in Florida, funded through a competitive $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. He also founded and directed the current Manufacturing Research Center at the University of Miami funded through an industry consortium.