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Special Issue—7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering
0957–5820/05/$30.00+0.00 # 2005 Institution of Chemical Engineers Trans IChemE, Part B, July 2005 Process Safety and Environmental Protection, 83(B4): 283–284
www.icheme.org/journals doi: 10.1205/psep.ed.0504
EDITORIAL Special Issue—7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering
patterns of water management? And infrastructure projects (power stations, dams, roads, airports) usually deliver gains to some, but problems to others. We must always check that we are making things better, not worse – converting mass and energy at a huge scale inevitably has huge consequences. The requirement that all engineers now be made aware of these aspects of development, as part of their education, is a very welcome innovation of the last ten years. We are now starting to see sustainability priorities treated as fundamental in process development, project specification, product design – and in fact all the areas where engineers are active. This is no longer an option, but an essential feature of professional and responsible engineering.
WHY SUSTAINABILITY MATTERS The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its annual survey of human development comments ‘People are the real wealth of nations. Indeed, the basic purpose of development is to enlarge human freedoms. The process of development can expand human capabilities by expanding the choices that people have to live full and creative lives. And people are both the beneficiaries of such development and the agents of the progress and change that bring it about.’ (see http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/) In delivering the development to which this UNDP report refers, to as many people as possible, we can encounter many difficulties, political, social and economic, but none are so certain as those that result from the workings of the laws of conservation of mass and energy. If human freedom includes the right for all of us to travel to a different place to work, or to travel around and see the world, or even just to visit our friends and neighbours, then the requirement for energy to fuel our journeys will eventually challenge the world’s ability to supply it. And the global consumption of fossil fuels, for transport and other purposes, is, we now know, putting sufficient carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to change the climate. The UNDP expects an increase in population of 30% over the next 25 years, and these extra two billion people will place an extra strain on resources, particularly in places where there is a problem already. For example, around 2.4 billion people currently have no access to basic sanitation, because of difficulties in water supply and management. Again, providing sufficient water to grow crops to feed us all will be a huge challenge. Around 70% of fresh water usage is devoted to agriculture, with the result that, for example, in large areas of India and China, groundwater levels are falling by one to three metres each year, as over-extraction occurs. Engineers are trained to apply technical solutions, and the UNDP survey includes areas where we can justifiably claim that we have played a role in raising the Human Development Index – the UNDP’s composite headline indicator. Wealth is being created, diseases are being controlled, and infrastructure that delivers protection and comfort is being built. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that benefits have always to be balanced against disadvantages. Wealth can be created by a project, but what is the environmental cost of resource depletion, and might there perhaps be alternatives? Disease can be fought by better sanitation, but what are the social costs of changing
Richard Darton Professor of Engineering Science University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Sustainable development is recognized as one of the key challenges for the chemical engineering profession and the chemical industry (CEFIC, 2004; ACS et al., 1996). It is now widely accepted that this can only be achieved by balancing all three dimensions of sustainability – economy, environment and society – and chemical engineers are already working actively towards reaching this goal (Azapagic, 2004). The papers submitted to the 7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering demonstrate this amply: a quarter of 2000 contributions overall are within the theme ‘Engineering for Life’, which includes several sustainabilityrelated topics. Two of these – ‘Environmental Engineering and Management’ and ‘Clean and Sustainable Technologies’ – are the second and sixth most popular topics of the Congress (IChemE, 2005), respectively, having attracted between them more than 250 paper submissions. This special issue of Process Safety and Environmental Protection presents some of these papers chosen as examples to illustrate more recent activities related to sustainability. They are grouped in four broad and in some instances related topics: Safety and Risk Management Systems; Clean and Sustainable Technologies; Environmental Engineering and Management; and Resource and Energy Efficiency. The papers cover a number of sustainability issues, including energy, resource use, pollution control and safety (not necessarily in this order), to demonstrate
283
284
EDITORIAL
what could be done to improve sustainability performance of process plants and industrial systems. Starting with the issue of energy, Mu¨ller-Steinhagen and Nitsch argue in their keynote paper that the present supply of energy is unsustainable and that the future energy systems should be based on renewable energy sources and carriers, including hydrogen. Also focusing on energy and in particular on the issue of hydrogen provision, Elder et al. propose separation of HIx in the sulphur–iodine thermochemical cycle as potentially more sustainable process for hydrogen generation. The papers by Bartl et al. and Hart et al. address the issue of resource use, both concentrating on fibre recycling; the former on textile and the latter on paper fibres. Bartl et al. give an overview of the most important sources of end-of-life fibre products and the-state-of-the-art in fibre recycling while Hart et al. demonstrate that on a lifecycle basis recycling of graphics paper fibres can be environmentally sustainable. A number of papers address the issue of pollution cleanup, widely viewed as an unsustainable but in reality still an unavoidable approach to environmental management. Benyahia et. al. and Bayley and Biggs are concerned with soil clean-up, using bioremediation and jet-pump scrubbing, respectively, to remove hydrocarbon-based contamination; removal efficiencies of up to 90% have been reported by the authors. Also addressing the issue of organic pollution but in waste water, Stu¨ber et al. demonstrate that chemical wet oxidation over active carbon with or without hydrogen peroxide is a versatile technique for removing organic pollutants from wastewater. Finally, several papers deal with the issue of safety and risk management. In their respective papers Raman and Grillo and Pasman et al. use mathematical modelling to provide better understanding of process hazards and develop tools to control the processes better or enable improved design. Cockshott proposes the use of a simplified risk management tool, ‘probability bow-ties’, to predict the
likelihood, severity and level of risk while Rushton and Glossop try to predict the number of injuries and deaths in single incidents in the process industries. Fitzgerald and Dalijono et al. on the other hand focus on the human element of safety in an attempt to understand and predict human behaviour in order to facilitate the culture change and so reduce risks in operating process plants. The above is necessarily only a limited, albeit a representative, selection of the sustainability issues that our profession is facing and will have to continue addressing in the future. As I have argued in one of my previous editorials (Azapagic, 2004) although the challenge of sustainable development is enormous, we have already started to address some of the issues and I believe that our commitment to sustainability has already resulted in positive and encouraging changes across the board - from the industrial sector to academe to professional organizations. I hope that this Congress will be a further demonstration of our continued commitment to sustainable development and I look forward to future contributions of our profession to sustainability. Adisa Azapagic Professor of Sustainable Engineering University of Surrey, Guildford, UK REFERENCES ACS et al., 1996, Technology Vision 2020. The US Chemistry Industry. The American Chemistry Society, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, The Chemical Manufacturers Association, The Council for Chemical Research, and The Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association, December 1996, Washington, www.acs.org Azapagic, A., 2004, Sustainability: Lip Service or a Genuine Commitment? Trans IChemE, Part B, Process Safe Env Prot, 82(B4): 267–268. CEFIC, 2004, Horizon 2015: Perspectives for the European Chemical Industry, CEFIC, March 2004, www.cefic.org IChemE, 2005, 7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering, www. chemengcongress2005.co.uk
Trans IChemE, Part B, Process Safety and Environmental Protection, 2005, 83(B4): 283–284
www.icheme.org/journals doi: 10.1205/psep.ed.0504
EDITORIAL Special Issue—7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering
patterns of water management? And infrastructure projects (power stations, dams, roads, airports) usually deliver gains to some, but problems to others. We must always check that we are making things better, not worse – converting mass and energy at a huge scale inevitably has huge consequences. The requirement that all engineers now be made aware of these aspects of development, as part of their education, is a very welcome innovation of the last ten years. We are now starting to see sustainability priorities treated as fundamental in process development, project specification, product design – and in fact all the areas where engineers are active. This is no longer an option, but an essential feature of professional and responsible engineering.
WHY SUSTAINABILITY MATTERS The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its annual survey of human development comments ‘People are the real wealth of nations. Indeed, the basic purpose of development is to enlarge human freedoms. The process of development can expand human capabilities by expanding the choices that people have to live full and creative lives. And people are both the beneficiaries of such development and the agents of the progress and change that bring it about.’ (see http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/) In delivering the development to which this UNDP report refers, to as many people as possible, we can encounter many difficulties, political, social and economic, but none are so certain as those that result from the workings of the laws of conservation of mass and energy. If human freedom includes the right for all of us to travel to a different place to work, or to travel around and see the world, or even just to visit our friends and neighbours, then the requirement for energy to fuel our journeys will eventually challenge the world’s ability to supply it. And the global consumption of fossil fuels, for transport and other purposes, is, we now know, putting sufficient carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to change the climate. The UNDP expects an increase in population of 30% over the next 25 years, and these extra two billion people will place an extra strain on resources, particularly in places where there is a problem already. For example, around 2.4 billion people currently have no access to basic sanitation, because of difficulties in water supply and management. Again, providing sufficient water to grow crops to feed us all will be a huge challenge. Around 70% of fresh water usage is devoted to agriculture, with the result that, for example, in large areas of India and China, groundwater levels are falling by one to three metres each year, as over-extraction occurs. Engineers are trained to apply technical solutions, and the UNDP survey includes areas where we can justifiably claim that we have played a role in raising the Human Development Index – the UNDP’s composite headline indicator. Wealth is being created, diseases are being controlled, and infrastructure that delivers protection and comfort is being built. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that benefits have always to be balanced against disadvantages. Wealth can be created by a project, but what is the environmental cost of resource depletion, and might there perhaps be alternatives? Disease can be fought by better sanitation, but what are the social costs of changing
Richard Darton Professor of Engineering Science University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Sustainable development is recognized as one of the key challenges for the chemical engineering profession and the chemical industry (CEFIC, 2004; ACS et al., 1996). It is now widely accepted that this can only be achieved by balancing all three dimensions of sustainability – economy, environment and society – and chemical engineers are already working actively towards reaching this goal (Azapagic, 2004). The papers submitted to the 7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering demonstrate this amply: a quarter of 2000 contributions overall are within the theme ‘Engineering for Life’, which includes several sustainabilityrelated topics. Two of these – ‘Environmental Engineering and Management’ and ‘Clean and Sustainable Technologies’ – are the second and sixth most popular topics of the Congress (IChemE, 2005), respectively, having attracted between them more than 250 paper submissions. This special issue of Process Safety and Environmental Protection presents some of these papers chosen as examples to illustrate more recent activities related to sustainability. They are grouped in four broad and in some instances related topics: Safety and Risk Management Systems; Clean and Sustainable Technologies; Environmental Engineering and Management; and Resource and Energy Efficiency. The papers cover a number of sustainability issues, including energy, resource use, pollution control and safety (not necessarily in this order), to demonstrate
283
284
EDITORIAL
what could be done to improve sustainability performance of process plants and industrial systems. Starting with the issue of energy, Mu¨ller-Steinhagen and Nitsch argue in their keynote paper that the present supply of energy is unsustainable and that the future energy systems should be based on renewable energy sources and carriers, including hydrogen. Also focusing on energy and in particular on the issue of hydrogen provision, Elder et al. propose separation of HIx in the sulphur–iodine thermochemical cycle as potentially more sustainable process for hydrogen generation. The papers by Bartl et al. and Hart et al. address the issue of resource use, both concentrating on fibre recycling; the former on textile and the latter on paper fibres. Bartl et al. give an overview of the most important sources of end-of-life fibre products and the-state-of-the-art in fibre recycling while Hart et al. demonstrate that on a lifecycle basis recycling of graphics paper fibres can be environmentally sustainable. A number of papers address the issue of pollution cleanup, widely viewed as an unsustainable but in reality still an unavoidable approach to environmental management. Benyahia et. al. and Bayley and Biggs are concerned with soil clean-up, using bioremediation and jet-pump scrubbing, respectively, to remove hydrocarbon-based contamination; removal efficiencies of up to 90% have been reported by the authors. Also addressing the issue of organic pollution but in waste water, Stu¨ber et al. demonstrate that chemical wet oxidation over active carbon with or without hydrogen peroxide is a versatile technique for removing organic pollutants from wastewater. Finally, several papers deal with the issue of safety and risk management. In their respective papers Raman and Grillo and Pasman et al. use mathematical modelling to provide better understanding of process hazards and develop tools to control the processes better or enable improved design. Cockshott proposes the use of a simplified risk management tool, ‘probability bow-ties’, to predict the
likelihood, severity and level of risk while Rushton and Glossop try to predict the number of injuries and deaths in single incidents in the process industries. Fitzgerald and Dalijono et al. on the other hand focus on the human element of safety in an attempt to understand and predict human behaviour in order to facilitate the culture change and so reduce risks in operating process plants. The above is necessarily only a limited, albeit a representative, selection of the sustainability issues that our profession is facing and will have to continue addressing in the future. As I have argued in one of my previous editorials (Azapagic, 2004) although the challenge of sustainable development is enormous, we have already started to address some of the issues and I believe that our commitment to sustainability has already resulted in positive and encouraging changes across the board - from the industrial sector to academe to professional organizations. I hope that this Congress will be a further demonstration of our continued commitment to sustainable development and I look forward to future contributions of our profession to sustainability. Adisa Azapagic Professor of Sustainable Engineering University of Surrey, Guildford, UK REFERENCES ACS et al., 1996, Technology Vision 2020. The US Chemistry Industry. The American Chemistry Society, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, The Chemical Manufacturers Association, The Council for Chemical Research, and The Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association, December 1996, Washington, www.acs.org Azapagic, A., 2004, Sustainability: Lip Service or a Genuine Commitment? Trans IChemE, Part B, Process Safe Env Prot, 82(B4): 267–268. CEFIC, 2004, Horizon 2015: Perspectives for the European Chemical Industry, CEFIC, March 2004, www.cefic.org IChemE, 2005, 7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering, www. chemengcongress2005.co.uk
Trans IChemE, Part B, Process Safety and Environmental Protection, 2005, 83(B4): 283–284