Handbook of Environmental Engineering

Myer Kutz

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119304432
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technologie et ingénierie
• Subtopic: Gestion de l'environnement

A comprehensive guide for both fundamentals and real-world applications of environmental engineering

Written by noted experts, Handbook of Environmental Engineering offers a comprehensive guide to environmental engineers who desire to contribute to mitigating problems, such as flooding, caused by extreme weather events, protecting populations in coastal areas threatened by rising sea levels, reducing illnesses caused by polluted air, soil, and water from improperly regulated industrial and transportation activities, promoting the safety of the food supply. Contributors not only cover such timely environmental topics related to soils, water, and air, minimizing pollution created by industrial plants and processes, and managing wastewater, hazardous, solid, and other industrial wastes, but also treat such vital topics as porous pavement design, aerosol measurements, noise pollution control, and industrial waste auditing. This important handbook:

• Enables environmental engineers to treat problems in systematic ways
• Discusses climate issues in ways useful for environmental engineers
• Covers up-to-date measurement techniques important in environmental engineering
• Reviews current developments in environmental law for environmental engineers
• Includes information on water quality and wastewater engineering
• Informs environmental engineers about methods of dealing with industrial and municipal waste, including hazardous waste

Designed for use by practitioners, students, and researchers, Handbook of Environmental Engineering contains the most recent information to enable a clear understanding of major environmental issues.

1
Environmental Systems Analysis

Adisa Azapagic

School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

1.1 Introduction

Throughout history, engineers were always expected to provide innovative solutions to various societal challenges, and these expectations continue to the present day. However, nowadays, we are facing some unprecedented challenges, such as climate change, growing energy demand, resource scarcity, and inadequate access to food and water, to name but a few. With a fast‐growing population, it is increasingly clear that the lifestyles of modern society cannot be sustained indefinitely. Growing scientific evidence shows that we are exceeding the Earth’s capacity to provide many of the resources we use and to accommodate our emissions to the environment (IPCC, 2013; UNEP, 2012).

Engineers have a significant role to play in addressing these sustainability challenges by helping meet human needs through provision of technologies, products, and services that are economically viable, environmentally benign, and socially beneficial (Azapagic and Perdan, 2014). However, one of the challenges is determining what technologies, products, and services are sustainable and which metrics to use to ascertain that.

Environmental systems analysis (ESA) can be used for these purposes. ESA takes a systems approach to describe and evaluate the impacts of various human activities on the environment. A systems approach is essential for this as it enables consideration of the complex interrelationships among different elements of the system, recognizing that the behavior of the whole system is quite different from its individual elements when considered in isolation from each other. The “system” in this context can be a product, process, project, organization, or a whole country.

Many methods are used in ESA, including:

• Energy and exergy analysis
• Material and substance flow analysis (SFA)
• Environmental risk assessment (ERA)
• Environmental management systems (EMS)
• Environmental input–output analysis (EIOA)
• Life cycle assessment (LCA)
• Life cycle costing (LCC)
• Social life cycle assessment (S‐LCA)
• Cost–benefit analysis (CBA).

These methods are discussed in the rest of this chapter.

1.2 Environmental Systems Analysis Methods

In addition to the methodologies that underpin them, ESA methods differ in many other respects, including the focus, scope, application, and sustainability aspects considered. This is summarized in Table 1.1 and discussed in the sections that follow.

Table 1.1 An overview of methods used in environmental systems analysis.

Method	Focus	Scope/system boundary	Sustainability aspects	Application
Energy/exergy analysis	Production processes, supply chains, regions, countries	Production process, sectorial, regional, national	Energy	Process or project analysis, energy efficiency, identification of energy “hot spots”
Material flow analysis	Materials	Regional, national, global	Natural resources	Environmental accounting, preservation of resources, policy
Substance flow analysis	Chemical substances	Regional, national, global	Environmental pollution	Environmental accounting and protection, strategic management of chemicals, policy
Environmental risk assessment	Products, installations	Product or installation, local, regional, national	Environmental, health and safety	Risk analysis, evaluation of risk mitigation measures, financial planning, regulation
Environmental management systems	Organizations	Organization	Environmental	Environmental management
Environmental input–output analysis	Product groups, sectors, national economy	Sectors, supply chains, national economy	Environmental and economic	Environmental accounting, policy
Life cycle assessment	Products, processes, services, activities	Life cycle/supply chain	Environmental	Benchmarking, identification of opportunities for improvements, eco‐design, policy
Life cycle costing	Products, processes, services, activities	Life cycle/supply chain	Economic	Benchmarking, identification of opportunities for improvements
Social life cycle assessment	Products, processes, services, activities	Life cycle/supply chain	Social	Benchmarking, identification of opportunities for improvements, policy
Cost–benefit analysis	Projects, activities	Project, activi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Environmental Systems Analysis
• 2 Measurements in Environmental Engineering
• 3 Environmental Law for Engineers
• 4 Climate Modeling
• 5 Climate Change Impact Analysis for the Environmental Engineer
• 6 Adaptation Design to Sea Level Rise
• 7 Soil Physical Properties and Processes
• 8 In Situ Soil and Sediment Remediation
• 9 Remote Sensing of Environmental Variables and Fluxes
• 10 Environmental Fluid Mechanics
• 11 Water Quality
• 12 Wastewater Engineering
• 13 Wastewater Recycling
• 14 Design of Porous Pavements for Improved Water Quality and Reduced Runoff
• 15 Air Pollution Control Engineering
• 16 Atmospheric Aerosols and Their Measurement
• 17 Indoor Air Pollution
• 18 Environmental Noise Pollution
• 19 Hazardous Waste Management
• 20 Waste Minimization and Reuse Technologies
• 21 Solid Waste Separation and Processing
• 22 Waste Reduction in Metals Manufacturing
• 23 Waste Reduction and Pollution Prevention for the Chemicals Industry
• 24 Industrial Waste Auditing
• Index
• End User License Agreement