Professional Documents
Culture Documents
- design, discovery and implementation of engineering solutions with an awareness of potential benefits
and problems in terms of the environment, the economy and society throughout the lifestyle of the
design
Maximize Efficiency
Products, processes, and systems should be designed to maximize mass, energy, space, and time
efficiency.
Conserve Complexity
Embedded entropy and complexity must be viewed as an investment when making design choices on
recycle, reuse, or beneficial disposition.
If the degrees of freedom within the system can be increased, more benefits can be realized.
At this point, the engineer needs to have a vision of the future regarding how these materials will be
maintained, what cleaning agents will be used, what the water and energy demands of the construction will be,
what will happen to the construction after it has finished its useful life, and what will be the destiny of these
materials at the end of the life of the construction.
7.3 Prevention of pollution, design for the environment, industrial ecology, sustainability
Prevention of pollution
focused on increasing the efficiency of a process to reduce the amount of pollution generated.
idea of incrementalism or eco-efficiency, where the current system is adjusted to be better than
before.
Source reduction-Waste (hazardous substance, toxic agent or contaminant) must be avoided from
the source (before recycling, treatment or disposal).
Recycling- The waste generated must be reused either in the process in which it was created or in
another process.
Treatment -Waste that can not be recycled must be treated to reduce its risk.
Disposition -Waste that is not treated must be disposed of in an environmentally sound manner.
Waste minimization
- a process of elimination that involves reducing the amount of waste produced in society and helps to
eliminate the generation of harmful and persistent wastes, supporting the efforts to promote a more
sustainable society.
If waste creation can not be avoided under certain conditions or circumstances, designers and
engineers may consider alternative mechanisms to effectively exploit these resources for value-
added purposes.
Eg. The waste could be beneficially used as a feedstock.
The recovery of waste as a feedstock represents potential environmental and economic benefits.
Industrial ecology
- Shifting of industrial proceses from linear systems (type1) in which resource and capital investments
move through the system to become waste, to ecological closed-loop system where waste become input
for new processes (type3)
Unlimited Unlimited
Organism
Resource waste
Energy
Scheme of ecosystems type 1, 2 and 3 In this ecosystem, the waste is recycled back into the system. a) The type
1 ecosystem is a traditional industrial system where the investments of resources and capital move through a
system to become waste. b) The type 2 ecosystem has some cycle and generates some waste. c) The type 3
ecosystem is a closed return system where waste becomes inputs for new processes.
Design strategies for the environment (DFE) for the elimination of environmental burdens
• Changes in the selection of materials
• Changes in equipment selection; Improved purchase options
• Improved operating practices
• Improved recovery and disposal practices
• Improved logistics
The final goal would be completely benign materials or chemicals. That is, chemicals and materials would not
cause harm if they were released into the environment or human beings were exposed to them.
7.4.2. Life cycle considerations take into account the environmental performance of a product, process, or
system through all phases from acquisition of raw materials to refining those materials, manufacturing, use and
end-of-life management.
In the case of engineering infrastructure, the life stages would be site development, materials, and product
delivery, infrastructure manufacture, infrastructure use, and refurbishment, recycling, and disposal. In some
cases transportation impacts are also considered.
Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The idea of life cycle considerations is to protect against
applying green engineering and sustainable design on just one life cycle stage.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a sophisticated way of examining the total environmental impact
through every life cycle stage.
Economic Life Cycle Assessment: Life Cycle Costing. A financial analysis can look at costs across the
life cycle of a product, process, or system.
Life cycle cost (LCC) is known as the total cost of ownership. When performing analysis on LCC, it is
important to put all the costs and/revenues that occur the year as a single year-end amounts.
The value of money from different time periods can be adjusted using an interest rate.
Interest is the fee paid to borrow money, since the money being used in the present is not available for
other expenditures or investments.
Principal is the original amount lent or spent.
If interest is paid annually and the time period is greater than a year, the interest is said to be
compounded.
Beyond Environmental and Economic Life Cycle Considerations. Intangible costs and benefits include
reputation, brand value, potential liability, stock performance, societal and quality –of-life benefits,
stakeholder support, client and employee loyalty, innovation, and leadership.
7.4.3 System thinking considers component parts of a system as having added characteristics or features when
functioning within a system rather that isolated alone.
Systems as a whole can be better understood when the linkages and interactions between components are
considered in addition to the individual components.
Casual loop diagram (CLD). It provides a means to articulate the dynamic, interconnected nature of
complex systems.
- These diagram consists of arrows connecting variables in a way that shows how one variable affects
another.
- The arrow is labeled with s when the first variable changes, the second variable changes in the same
direction. And o means that the first variable causes a change in the opposite direction of the second
variables.
- Arrows come together to form loops and each loop is labeled with an R, or a B. R means
reinforcing, means that the casual relationship within the loop create exponential growth or
collapse. B means balancing, that is, the causal influences in the loop keep variables in equilibrium.
7.4.4 Resilience is the capacity of the system to survive, adapt, and grow in the face of unforeseen changes,
even catastrophic incidents (Fiskel, 2003). Resilience is a common feature of complex systems, such as
companies, cities, or ecosystems.
7.4.5 DESIGN CRITERIA
Performance Criteria
- explicit goals that a design must achieve in order to be successful
- used to define the design standards
The success of engineering strategies such as total quality management and six sigma suggests that
sustainability goals can be treated similarly.
In this way, sustainability goals can be incorporated into design evaluation as a minimum standard for
bringing the design to production or implementation.
Viable designs
- defined as one that considers sustainability goals.
- prevents design that are inherently unsustainable at the design stage from moving forward.
Staying clean without detergent: German scientists found that lotus leaves have mountainous
surfaces that keep dirt particles from adhering. A number of new products are available in self-
cleaning lotus-effect surfaces, including car paint and building façade paint. Lotusan self-
cleaning façade paint, dries with lotus-like bumps, and rainwater cleans the surface.
7.4.8 EFFICIENCY
Designers no longer consider mass and energy to be the only goals for efficient use; now they also
consider space and time. This can be achieved through intensification of products and processes into
smaller, more distributed components.
E factor – is defined to measure the efficiency of various chemical industries in terms of kilograms of
material inputs relative to the kilogram of final product. A higher E factor means more waste and,
consequently, greater negative environmental impact. An E factor id determined by the following
equation:
∑ 𝑘𝑔 𝑖𝑛𝑝𝑢𝑡𝑠
𝐸 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟 =
∑ 𝑘𝑔 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡