Teaching green topics to chemical engineers: Innovation in the process design curriculum

To ensure that future engineers are armed with the necessary skills and knowledge to design environmentally conscious products, a multi-faceted approach has been implemented to incorporate green engineering principles into the university curriculum. Among the various facets, which range from introductory freshman courses to graduate courses, this paper focuses on efforts to introduce green design topics into the chemical engineering senior process design sequence. The first course in this sequence traditionally is focused on process economics. There are many similarities between the principles of process economics and the methods used for environmental impact assessment: both are used to support decision making among alternatives; both are best implemented with systematic, transparent tools; both rely extensively on difficult-to-find datasets.