Engineering Sustainable Technologies
David T. Allen, Professor, Chemical Engineering -- February 19, 2004
PRESENTATION OVERVIEW:
A course in Chemical Engineering, titled Engineering Sustainable Technologies, was developed in response to Dean Streetman’s and Vice-Provost Gilbert’s request for new courses that could be offered by the College of Engineering to non-engineering and science majors. The content as outlined in the course description is:
“Just six elements (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur) are the major constituents of living tissue and account for 95% of the biosphere. Understanding the “grand cycles”, which describe how the Earth’s systems process these materials, is critical to developing an understanding of global environmental changes. Many of these grand cycles are now significantly affected by flows generated by human activities, so the grand cycles of material flows must include a description of material and energy flows in both natural and engineered environments.
The focus of this course is on flows of materials and energy in engineered environments at local, regional and global scales, and the interaction of those anthropogenic flows with natural cycles of materials and energy. The course will begin with a brief description of biogeochemical flows (grand cycles) and then examine anthropogenic material flows at the national level, in industrial sectors, and for consumer products.”
The academic development project described in this presentation resulted in the creation of two web-based instructional packages to complement the course. The modules were titled:
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What is a “green” product?
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What is a “green” material?
This presentation will provide an overview of the course and will describe the web-based modules.