New Courses on Environmentally Conscious Chemical Process Design and Pollution
Prevention
The course "Environmentally Conscious Chemical Process Design" was developed
at the University of Notre Dame, and has been taught three times. A similar
course, with the title "Pollution Prevention," was developed at West Virginia
University and taught for the first time in Spring 2000. Both courses
are described below, with links to more detailed information and course
materials.
A plenary lecture
describing the course at Notre Dame was given at the 7th International
Symposium on Process Systems Engineering (PSE 2000), July 16-21, 2000 in
Keystone, Colorado. A copy of the slides used for this lecture is
available in PDF format by clicking here.
A preprint of an invited
paper corresponding to this lecture is available in PDF format by clicking
here. An
abbreviated version of this paper is published in Computers & Chemical
Engineering, Volume 24, pp. 1375-1380 (2000).
Environmentally Conscious Chemical Process Design (University of Notre
Dame)
The goal of this course is for students to learn how to design and operate
chemical processes so that the amount of pollutants that are released into
the environment is decreased. The emphasis is on pollution prevention rather
than remediation.
The course involves three components: environmental law, engineering
solutions and new technology. Environmental law is important because it
is the driving force behind both pollution prevention and environmental
remediation efforts in industry. The basis for engineering solutions, including
simple things like the reduction of fugitive emissions, as well as more
complex and abstract ideas such as life cycle analysis, are aptly covered
in the textbook by Allen and Rosselot, Pollution Prevention for Chemical
Processes. The section on new technology that is being developed for
pollution prevention is drawn from the current literature. One tool that
the course uses for discussing new technology are three case studies that
provide an indepth comparison between old technology and new technology
that has been developed for pollution
Pollution Prevention (West Virginia University)
This course was taught using the draft of the green engineering text, in
preparation under the auspices of the EPA. The goals of the course were
for students to:
-
understand environmental issues affecting society and the chemical process
industry
-
understand environmental regulations affecting the chemical process industry
-
understand the environmental risks associated with chemical plants
-
understand and appreciate the role of chemical engineers in pollution prevention
-
be able to evaluate the environmental risks of chemicals involved in a
chemical process
-
be able to estimate potential chemical releases and exposures in a chemical
process
-
understand the concept of and recognize opportunities for applications
of green chemistry
-
be able to evaluate the environmental performance of unit operations and
of a process flowsheet
-
be able to suggest strategies for pollution prevention in unit operations
-
be able to analyze flowsheets to suggest strategies for process-wide pollution
prevention
-
be able to evaluate the economic consequences of pollution prevention
-
understand and be able to perform a rudimentary life-cycle analysis
Course Materials (PDF
file) (Word file)
-- including syllabus, course outline, and assigned work
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