Green Engineering Textbook and Training Modules

Our textbook

Using EPA's green engineering textbook, "Green Engineering: Environmentally Conscious Design of Chemical Processes," can help academia emphasize pollution prevention and incorporate risk into green engineering courses. 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.

Textbook outline
Training modules

Textbook outline

Part I. 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.
Part II. 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.
Part III. 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.

Training modules

EPA developed training modules to be used in conjunction with the green engineering textbook to help educators incorporate green engineering material into their classes.

"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