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Implementing Green Engineering

Risk assessment considers the extent of harm a chemical and its uses pose to human health and the environment. Mathematically expressed it is a function of hazards and exposures. 

Risk = f (Hazard, Exposure)

A hazard is anything that will produce an adverse effect on human health and the environment.  Exposure is the quantitative or qualitative assessment of contact to the skin or orifices of the body by a chemical.  Traditional pollution prevention techniques focus on reducing waste as much as possible however, risk assessment methods used in pollution prevention can help quantify the degree of environmental impact for individual chemicals. With this approach, engineers can intelligently design processes and products by focusing on the most beneficial methods to minimize risk.

By applying risk assessment concepts to processes and products, the engineer can accomplish the following:

• estimate the environmental impacts of specific chemicals on people and ecosystems;
• prioritize chemicals that need to be minimized or eliminated.
• optimize design to avoid or reduce environmental impacts;
• assess feed and recycle streams based on risk and not volume within a chemical process.
• and design "greener" products and processes.

Green engineering is not a distant goal or dream; it is a dynamic venture being undertaken today in the private sector, government, and academia. Several case studies are available that show how Green Engineering concepts and tools are being successfully applied in a variety of processes and industries.

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Partnership between EPA and AlChE

The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency share mutual interests in advancing programs aimed at improving eco-efficiency, protecting the environment, developing more sustainable (green) manufacturing processes, and at helping integrate eco-efficiency and pollution prevention into industrial management systems across a range of industries and companies within those industries. In recognition of these mutual interests, AIChE has entered into a partnership with EPA's Environment Engineering Research Division ("EERD") and EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics - Chemical Engineering Branch ("OPPT-ChE") to establish a program focused on helping industry maintain its competitiveness in a competitive global economy and become more sustainable.

The three-year program has the goal of radically changing how process and product design is undertaken and has three main thrusts - (a) the development of a framework for evaluating new green engineering ("GE") and green chemistry ("GC") approaches to determine their potential commercial feasibility and value to industry; (b) the development of tools and methodologies for industrial practitioners that support the design of sustainable manufacturing processes and products, including concepts from industrial ecology, life-cycle assessment, design for the environment etc.; and (c) the promotion of these concepts and their life-cycle commercial benefits to different stakeholders (academia, senior management in industry, practicing engineers, managers of process design functions, and technicians). Building these tool-kits and promoting awareness of these new design paradigms will allow new graduates and current practitioners to make significant improvements in the sustainability of the processes of tomorrow. It is expected that this program will provide a valuable partnership between leading industrial corporations and the EPA that will help focus R&D activities and accelerate the acceptance and deployment of these concepts across a broad section of industry, including small- and medium-sized companies that have limited resources for initiatives of this type.

For more information:

Jo Rogers
Director of CWRT
joser@aiche.org

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