1st Edition

Sustainable Process Engineering Concepts, Strategies, Evaluation and Implementation

By David Brennan Copyright 2012
    422 Pages 76 B/W Illustrations
    by Jenny Stanford Publishing

    This book introduces chemical engineering students to key concepts, strategies, and evaluation methods in sustainable process engineering. The book is intended to supplement chemical engineering texts in fundamentals and design, rather than replace them. The key objectives of the book are to widen system boundaries beyond a process plant to include utility supplies, interconnected plants, wider industry sectors, and entire product life cycles; identify waste and its sources in process and utility systems and adopt waste minimization strategies; broaden evaluation to include technical, economic, safety, environmental, social, and sustainability criteria and to integrate the assessments; and broaden the engineering horizon to incorporate planning, development, design, and operations.

    Case examples are integrated with chapter topics throughout, and defined problems that reflect current industry challenges are provided. Contexts include electricity generation, waste sulfuric acid minimization, petroleum fuel desulfurization, and byproduct hydrogen utilization.

    The progressive response by legislators and professionals to perceived environmental damage and the concepts of sustainability, cleaner production, and industrial ecology
    Waste minimization strategies for reactors and separators and wider process and utility systems
    Environmental, safety, economic, and sustainability assessments
    Guidelines for implementing sustainable process engineering in planning, project development, design, and operations

    Biography

    David Brennan

    "The concepts involved in sustainable processing of materials require a wide understanding of chemical processes, and of the energy and water systems supporting them. There are repercussions of each design decision, which makes it an extremely challenging topic for students of chemical engineering. David Brennan provides an excellent framework for guiding students through this field, and the real examples in the book provide them with insights into how sustainability can be assessed by considering the range of impacts as well as practical engineering constraints."
    —Prof. Andrew Hoadley - Monash University, Australia