Textbook

EPA's Green Engineering Textbook, Green Engineering: Environmentally Conscious Design of Chemical Processes, is the first step in the development of Green Engineering educational materials. It is a college senior-to-graduate-level engineering textbook, to be used in the chemical engineering curriculum as a stand-alone course or to be incorporated into current courses.

The primary textbook authors include two prominent

chemical engineering professors: Dr. David Allen (University of Texas-Austin), Dr. David Shonnard (Michigan Technological University), as well as members from the Chemical Engineering Branch, and other contributors.

Prentice Hall is the publisher for Green Engineering: Environmentally Conscious Design of Chemical Processes, ISBN# 0-13-061908-6.  This chemical engineer's guide to managing and minimizing environmental impact has been released.  For information on how to order the book, contact Bernard Goodwin at Bernard_Goodwin@prenhall.com .

The Table of Contents highlights the following sections of the textbook:

1. A Chemical Engineer’s Guide to Environmental Issues and Regulations: What are the environmental performance issues to be addressed in the design of processes and products? This section of the textbook provides an introduction to environmental issues, risk assessment and risk management, federal regulations, and the roles and responsibilities of chemical engineers. It identifies the types of wastes, emissions, raw material use, and energy use that will be employed to determine the environmental performance of chemical processes and products.
   
2. Evaluating and Improving Environmental Performance of Chemical Process Designs: Having defined the pertinent environmental performance issues, how can the engineer design processes with superior environmental signatures? This section describes tools for assessing the environmental profile of chemical processes and the design tools that can be used to improve environmental performance. These tools include release estimation approaches and pollution prevention strategies, total cost accounting, and green process design.
3. Moving Beyond the Plant Boundary: What happens to a product or waste when it leaves the plant boundary? How does it affect consumers? Wildlife? Communities? Here, the textbook describes tools for improving product stewardship and improving the level of integration between chemical processes and other material processing operations.

To increase the accessibility of this information for students and professors, portions of the textbook are also available as supplements, as an option in lieu of purchasing the whole textbook. Supplements currently available include Introduction to Engineering, Design, Thermodynamics, and Kinetics.

"Having this type of textbook available will allow a department to develop a course and take students out to local companies as part of a pollution prevention/risk assessment program. Students will flock to the course."

Stanley M. Barnett, Professor of Chemical Engineering,
University of Rhode Island