Part I
A Chemical Engineer’s Guide to Environmental Issues and Regulations

Overview

This text presents approaches and methodologies for evaluating and improving the environmental performance of chemical processes and chemical products. Prerequisites for understanding this presentation are a basic knowledge of environmental issues and environmental regulations. The group of chapters listed below present this background material at a level suitable for senior to graduate-level chemical engineering students.

1. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to environmental issues. The issues range from global to local, and the emphasis is on the types of wastes and emissions that drive the environmental impacts.

2. Chapter 2 presents the concept of environmental risk. Risk frameworks are commonly used to assess the relative significance of environmental concerns.

3. Chapter 3 describes the regulatory frameworks that have emerged to control environmental risks. The focus is on key statutes that affect chemical engineers and the gradual evolution of regulatory structures from an end-of-pipe focus to a more flexible pollution prevention approach.

4. Chapter 4 summarizes the many contributions that chemical engineers can make in addressing environmental issues, particularly focusing on the role played by chemical process and product design engineers.

More specifically, Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to the data and science underlying environmental issues such as global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, ecosystem health, atmospheric and aquatic acidification, smog formation, hazardous waste generation, and non-hazardous waste generation. These environmental issues will be considered throughout the remainder of the book in evaluating the environmental performance of chemical processes and products. A basic understanding of the nature of these environmental concerns is important. Concepts of risk will also be used throughout the text, so Chapter 2presents basic definitions of risk. Chapter 2 also presents a qualitative discussion of the building blocks of risk assessment—emission estimation, environmental fate and transport evaluation, exposure quantification, and dose-response relationships. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the regulatory framework that has been built in the United States to address the environmental issues described in Chapter 1. The main focus is on federal legislation that has a major impact on chemical processes and products. A complete treatment of the topics covered in Chapters 1–3 could fill an entire curriculum but the goal in this volume is to condense this material into a form that can be covered in a few lectures. The treatment of individual topics is therefore brief. References to more complete descriptions are provided.

After reviewing Chapters 1–3, students should have a basic understanding of the environmental issues that a chemical engineer may need to address. The final chapter of this part describes the role that chemical process engineers and chemical product designers can play in solving these environmental problems.