POLLUTION PREVENTION : ENGINEERING DESIGN AT MACRO-, MESO-, AND MICROSCALES

Billions of tons of industrial waste are generated annually in industrialized countries. Managing and legally disposing of these wastes costs tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and these costs have been increasing rapidly. The escalation is likely to continue as emission standards become even more stringent around the world. In the face of these rapidly rising costs and rapidly increasing performance standards, traditional end-of-pipe approaches to waste management have become less attractive. The most economical waste management alternatives in many cases have become recycling of the waste or the redesign of chemical processes and products so that wastes are prevented or put to productive use. These strategies of recycling or reducing waste at the source have collectively come to be known as pollution prevention. The engineering challenges associated with pollution prevention are substantial. This presentation will categorize the challenges in three levels. At the most macroscopic level, the flow of materials in our industrial economy, from natural resource extraction to consumer product disposal, can be redesigned. Currently, most of our raw materials are virgin natural resources that are used once, then discarded. Studies in what has come to be called industrial ecology examine the material efficiency of large-scale industrial systems and attempt to improve that efficiency. A second level of engineering challenges is found at the scale of individual industrial facilities, where chemical processes and products can be redesigned so that waste is reduced. Finally, on a molecular level, chemical synthesis pathways, combustion reaction pathways, and other material fabrication procedures can be redesigned to reduce emissions of pollution and unwanted by-products. All of these design activities, shown in Figure 1, have the potential to prevent pollution. All involve the tools of engineering, and in particular, chemical engineering.