Sustainable Engineering : Concepts, Design and Case Studies

Sustainable Engineering: Design and Analysisis the first textbook to offer a unified approach and comprehensive tools for evaluating and reducing the environmental impacts of engineering designs. It builds on the authors'comprehensive benchmarking study of the incorporation of sustainability concepts in engineering curricula, and integrates well-accepted principles and methods from their highly successful textbook, Green Engineering. David Allen and David Shonnard cover everything students and professionals need to improve sustainability in any engineering discipline. They integrate coverage of sustainability concepts and lifecycle principles, quantitative engineering design principles and methods, evaluation tools, case studies, industry perspectives, and more. Readers will learn how to utilize green materials, design green processes and products, and assess the economic value of green designs. Using this book, engineering faculty can bring greater coherence to their instruction on sustainability issues, easily integrating sustainability topics into existing courses. Note: This text condenses the new Second Edition of Green Engineering: Environmentally Conscious Design of Chemical Processes, also scheduled for publication in 2011.

Dr. David T. Allen is the Gertz Regents Professor of Chemical Engineering, and the director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of multiple books and hundreds of scientific papers in areas ranging from coal liquefaction and heavy oil chemistry to the chemistry of urban atmospheres. The quality of his work has been recognized by research awards from the National Science Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, and the State of Texas. The findings from his research have been used to guide air quality policy development, and he has served on the U.S. EPA’s Science Advisory Board and the National Research Council’s Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, addressing issues at the interface between science, engineering, and public policy. For the past two decades, his work has also focused on the development of materials for environmental education, including coauthoring the textbook Green Engineering: Environmentally Conscious Design of Chemical Processes. He has won teaching awards at the University of Texas and UCLA. Dr. Allen received his B.S. in chemical engineering, with distinction, from Cornell University in 1979. His M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering were awarded by the California Institute of Technology in 1981 and 1983. He has held visiting faculty appointments at the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Department of Energy.

 

Dr. David R. Shonnard is Robbins Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Michigan Technological University and director of the Sustainable Futures Institute. He received a B.S. in chemical/metallurgical engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1983; an M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Davis, in 1985; a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, in 1991; postdoctoral training in bioengineering at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1990 to 1993; and he was a visiting instructor at the University of California at Berkeley in 2003. His experiences in life-cycle assessment (LCA) methods and applications include a one-year sabbatical at the Eco-efficiency Analysis Group at BASF AG in Ludwigshafen, Germany. He has been on the faculty in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Michigan Technological University since 1993. Dr. Shonnard has more than twenty years of academic experience in sustainability issues in the chemical industry and Green Engineering. He is coauthor of the textbook Green Engineering: Environmentally Conscious Design of Chemical Processes, published by Prentice Hall in 2002. His current research interests focus on investigations of new forest-based biorefinery processes for production of transportation fuels, such as cellulosic ethanol and pyrolysis-based biofuels, from woody biomass using recombinant DNA and other approaches. Another active research area is LCA of biofuels and other biorefinery products to determine greenhouse gas emissions and net energy balances. He has contributed to National Academy of Sciences publications on green chemistry/engineering/sustainability in the chemical industry. Dr. Shonnard has coauthored 70 peer-reviewed publications and received numerous honors and awards for teaching and research into environmental issues of the chemical industry, including the Ray W. Fahien Award from ASEE (2003). He is a recipient of the NSF/Lucent Technologies Foundation Industrial Ecology Research Fellowship (1998) for research that integrates environmental impact assessment with process design.

Preface                        ix

Acknowledgments                               xi

About the Authors                             xiii

 

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Sustainability                       1

1.1 Introduction     1

1.2 The Magnitude of the Sustainability Challenge 2

1.3 Energy 3

1.4 Materials Use 8

1.5 Environmental Emissions 13

1.6 Summary 27

Problems 28

References 32

 

Chapter 2: Risk and Life-Cycle Frameworks for Sustainability                 35

2.1 Introduction   35

2.2 Risk 35

2.3 Life-Cycle Frameworks   42

2.4 Life-Cycle Assessment Tools   55

2.5 Summary   57

Problems   57

Appendix: Readily Available Hazard References   61

References   62

 

Chapter 3: Environmental Law and Regulation              65

3.1 Introduction   65

3.2 Nine Prominent Federal Environmental Statutes   68

3.3 Evolution of Regulatory and Voluntary Programs from End-of-Pipe to Pollution Prevention and Sustainability   72

3.4 Pollution Prevention Concepts and Terminology   73

3.5 Environmental Law and Sustainability   74

Problems   75

Appendix   77

References   89

 

Chapter 4: Green, Sustainable Materials              91

4.1 Introduction   91

4.2 Environmental and Natural Resource Use Footprints of Material Extraction and Refining   91

4.3 Tracking Material Flows in Engineered Systems   99

4.4 Environmental Releases   107

4.5 Summary   114

Problems   114

References   115

 

Chapter 5: Design for Sustainability: Economic, Environmental, and Social Indicators           117

5.1 Introduction   117

5.2 Sustainable Engineering Design Principles   118

5.3 Economic Performance Indicators   126

5.4 Environmental Performance Indicators   133

5.5 Social Performance Indicators   146

5.6 Summary   149

Problems   149

Appendix   151

References   160

 

Chapter 6: Case Studies 165

6.1 Introduction   165

6.2 Biofuels for Transportation   166

6.3 Transportation, Logistics, and Supply Chains   181

6.4 Sustainable Built Environments   186

6.5 Additional Case Studies   201

References   201

 

Index           207