HW#1
Question 1:
Green engineering is process of Design, commercialization and use of products and process
that are feasible and economical while reducing Risk to human health and the environment and
generation of pollution at the source. This concept can be applied on number of products, like
homes, vehicles, offices, consumer products, electrical equipments and many other things.
It has been designed for the purpose of getting environmental, economic and social benefits.
Following are its potential benefits.
Economic benefits of green engineering include operating costs reduction (i.e., efficiency, waste
management, water, energy, repair and improvement) and optimization of life-cycle economic
performance.
Environmental benefits include protection of natural resources, increased utilization of
renewable energy sources, improvements in water and air quality and diminution of solid waste
generation.
Social benefits include improved health and comfort, reduced impact on local resources and
infrastructure, and use of reused /recycled materials.
Green engineering is that process which has least negative impact on the environment possible. It
will follows the philosophy that designing and manufacturing that products having minimize
damage to humans and the environment, so these products and processes will be more cost
friendly in the long run. In green engineering before starting the work on any project engineers
needs to analyze the situation and try to find environmentally friendly ways to produce the
product which will lass effect human beings and the Earth. Sometimes this process demands
more capital expenditure initially so that product being created is longer lasting and durable, so
the costs in the long-run are reduced. So green engineering focuses on creatinga sustainable
service, product or process that will be environmentally friendly.
Answer 2 2
Design for Environment (DfE) is considered as a systematic consideration during design of
issues associated with environmental safety and health over the entire product life cycle.
Some firms still avoid because they believe it is a time-consuming profit drain. But the opposite
can be true, if the firm recognizes that a lot of design effort needs to the product. Then
Preliminary decisions made collectively with engineers can save time later in design. Staff time
can also be saved through the process efficiencies that come with integrated design.
BY successfully integrating green design — product and process — firms can achieve more
business performance and quality that are not just related to green engineering, including
profitability and internal process efficiency. Achieving cultural change may involve a long and
challenging process. Organizations trying to execute sustainable development often find their
predictable operations and culture fundamental challenge. Some argue that a serious commitment
to sustainability requires extensive redesign of organizations and their basic operating practices.
So sustainable engineering is a designing approach that has the ability to fulfill the needs of
present and future generation without compromise.
Following are the Benefits of Sustainable Design include on culture:
Reduction in Life Cycle Costs (irrigation, power, maintenance, etc)
Environment Restoration and Protection
Better Working Environments for inhabitants
Reduction in pollution
Reduction in Disposal Costs and Waste Material
Answer 3 3
In any project environment Conflict is as inevitable because When project team members
interact each other during the course of completing their responsibilities and task, then there is
always a potential for conflict. Actually, it is virtually impossible for people with different
background, skills and norms to work together , make decisions and try to cope project
objectives and goals without conflict. Normally people consider that conflict is unhealthy
, undesirable and needs to be avoided at any costs. It is presumed that conflict is always
abnormal and it will produce personality problems or differences. This is not entirely
true. Conflict can be healthy and can produce desirable results. Sometimes it can be good for
entity because it enhance open-mindedness and helps to avoid the propensity toward group
think that many organizations fall prey to.. It is very important that it is not necessary that
conflict should always be avoided, but it needs to be managed. When management understand
conflict then they need to strength the relationships; improve productivity by reducing the time
and energy spent on handling conflict; reduce stress on lives, and get better results from the
conflicts.
For the purpose of managing it Project managers must identify, analyze, and evaluate both
positive and negative values of conflict and their effect on employees performance. They must
also learn how and when to encourage conflict and how to use it to increase the performance of
team members. Conflict need not have negative consequences. So manager needs to do
following
• Be neutral – strive to be fair.
• Inquire each party to state what they think the problem is and not ignore other issues.
• Listen attentively because Good communication is an essential ingredient to build a better understanding with staff, and it establishes employees trust.
• Managers need to Develop strong people management skills
• Like motivating staff, information sharing, constructive feedback, coaching, and setting
clear goals around roles and responsibilities play a vital role in preventing unhealthy
conflict.
• Encourage individuals for relevant training courses, team building activities and dealing
with different interactions
• Conduct a health assessment of team
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here what I’m looking to readjust to get the full mark :::
Good job. A lot of your information appears to come from other sources which you didn’t mention or cite from. Question 1 is not done in short essay form, its very disorganized. Question 1 talks a lot about green engineering, but more about what it is and not as much focus in put on the questions asked about it. For question 3, your discussion of conflict is good but your discussion is more in general, not regarding environmental- conscious environments or green engineering.
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HW#2
1.a)
Municipal Solid Waste or MSW is the waste consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. The Municipal Solid Waste Industry has four components: Recycling, Composting, Land filling and Waste-to-Energy via incineration.
These waste products can be incinerated to produce energy. Waste-to-Energy (WTE) is the process of generating energy in form of Electricity and/or heat from the incineration of waste. The method of using incineration to convert municipal solid waste (MSW) to energy is a comparatively old method of waste-to-energy production. Incineration is generally a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of organic substances contained in waste materials. It entails burning the waste to produce heat, which helps to boil the water and create hot steam. This steam rotates the steam turbines coupled with the generators, finally producing electricity. The concept of producing electricity is the same as the Thermal Power Plants, where fossil fuels (coal, diesel etc.) are burnt in the boiler to heat the water to produce steam. This steam is passed through the economizer utility to collect the heat for reusing it, and then this hot steam is passed through the steam turbines. The rotor shafts of the Steam Turbines are coupled with the Rotor of the Alternator, hence when the rotor of the Turbine rotates electricity is produced. In the rotor an external field is provided to control the power that is produced from the alternator. Electricity is produced by using the same method with the help of MSW, only fossil fuels are substituting with the waste products.
During the 2001-2007 period, there was increase in WTE capacity about four million metric tons per annum. China and Japan built many plants that were based on direct smelting or on fluidized bed combustion of solid waste. There are about 50 WTE plants in China. The largest user in thermal treatment of MSW in the world with 40 million tons is Japan.
There are lots of ways in which the MSW are disposed of .Most famous and well known methods are dumps. More commonly used today to protect the environment however, are landfills. These are specially created areas so waste can be put into the ground with little or no harm to the natural environment through pollution.
Nowadays, landfills are engineered in this way to protect the environment by protecting the pollutants from going into the soil and contaminating the ground water. The first method is by surrounding the landfills with clay liner, which can prevent the pollutants from leaving the landfill. These are called sanitary landfills. The 2nd method is to use synthetic liners like plastic to separate the landfills trash from the land below it. Once trash is put into these landfills, it is compacted until the areas is full, at which time the trash is buried. This is done to prevent the trash from contacting the environment but also to keep it dry and out of contact with air so it will not quickly decompose. This method is called Municipal Solid Waste Landfills.
About 55% of the waste generated in the United States goes to landfills while around 90% of waste created in the United Kingdom is disposed in this manner.
1.b)
Ashes that are created as a waste from the incineration of the MSW, cannot be buried in the landfills as they leach throughout the area and cause severe contamination. So disposing the ash is a problem. But they can be used as a material in the cement industry. But nowadays due to the problems created from the pollution caused from burning the waste the incineration method is avoided.
2)
The cost of building the incineration facility is $50 Million. The facility is capable of burning 750 tons of waste/ day producing 14 MW a day. This means 14/24 MW per Hour.
Now this amount of electricity can be sold for 0.095 per kilowatt hour. It is mentioned that there will be no additional cost for taking the waste to the facility, only a fee of $105 a ton has to be paid in order to bury the waste in a landfill.
So the total cost for burying the total 750 tons of waste into the landfill is 750*105= $78,750.
Now, as we need to ignore the operation cost, the revenue that comes from selling the electricity per hour is = hourly production value* rate per unit = (14/24)*(0.095/0.001) = $55.41
Now the total revenue per day is $1329.84.
So the total no. of days the facility will take to pay itself is = 59.21 days
|
Total amount of revenue(hourly)= $55.41 |
Amount of revenue in day= $1329.24 |
No. of days for paying itself= 59.21 |
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here is the instructor notice:::
For the second problem, made a miscalculation about the income from the electricity generated per day. 14 MW is created, which you need to convert to KW (1 MW = 1000 KW) before you can multiply it by the $0.095.
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HW#4
The Life Cycle Assessment of a Cell phone
• List 10 processes that occur as part of the creation, use, and disposal of that product.
• The extraction of materials such as nickel, copper, beryllium and others
• Material processing, such as combining crude oil, chemicals and natural gases to make plastic
• Manufacturing, using the materials processed to make the basic shapes of the cell phone
• Reassembling of the parts into a complete cell phone
• Packaging of a cell phone and its contents using paper, cartons and other materials
• Transporting the packaged product to destinations accessing to consumers
• Useful life of about 18 months
• A cell-phone is re-used, for instance when donated to a charity organization
• A cell phone is recycled, primarily its parts
• A cell phone is disposed in landfill (Environmental Protection Agency, 2013).
• List an environmental impact for each process
• Material extraction- use of “persistent toxins”, such as lead which stay in the environment for long, after disposal
• Material processing- release of Ozone layer gases, such as carbon monoxide , thus contributing to the global warming effect
• Manufacturing- uses chemicals that release poisonous gases to the environment
• Reassembling process- produce damaged parts, such as chips and batteries that are non-biodegradable and discarded into the environment and slowly release toxins into the environment through the out-gassing process
• Packaging- uses environmentally unfriendly materials, such as plastic and cartons that damage the ecology. When they find their ways to water bodies, they can cause death to fish and other water life through strangulation and ingestion.
• Transporting- causes vehicles to use fuel, such as diesel that emit Ozone layer gases, thus contributing to the global warming effect
• Useful life- extensive charging, which misuses electricity, thus increasing the pressure to get electricity from environmental unfriendly sources, such as coal.
• Re-Using- avoids discarding the cell phone, thus limiting the effect that its components could have when released into the environment for the time the cell phone is in use.
• Recycling- using the cell phone parts to create new phones instead of using newly manufactured parts, thus limiting the effect from extracting and processing cell phone material; the material is already available from existing phones.
• Disposing- results to releasing plastics and other environmental hazardous materials into the environment.
• What can be done to reduce the environmental impacts created by the creation, use, and disposal of that product?
To reduce the environmental impact created by a cell phone’s life cycle, much focus should be directed at reusing, packaging and recycling. The packaging of a cell phone should be done using environmentally friendly materials. Instead of discarding phones or storing unused phones, people should reuse them by donating them to charity organizations, schools, community organizations and persons who need them. This prolongs the useful time of cell phones and ensures that few phones are in circulation. Hence, only few phones, primarily those with no useful life are discarded. Nevertheless, even phones with no useful life should not be discarded. Such cell phones could be recycled. People should take them to electronic recyclers who could use the components to make other electronic gadgets or ship them to cell-phone companies for recycling. Ideally, recycling and reusing limits the number of phones discarded, thus reducing the amount of non-biodegradable cell phone material present in the environment. In addition, the materials processed and extracted are minimized as useful parts can be reused to make new cell phones. This means that the toxins released by the two processed to the environment and their effects on the environment are reduced (Prasad, Ohmori & Simunic, 2010).
References
Environmental Protection Agency. (2013). The life cycle of a cell phone. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/pdfs/life-cell.pdf
Prasad, R., Ohmori, S., & Simunic, D. (2010).Towards green Ict. Denmark:River Publishers
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It was full mark
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HW# 5
1) From the information discussed in class on plastics, select one type of plastic from the seven recycling codes. Do some research and find the process steps that this particular plastic goes through; from the time it is discarded to when it has been completely recycled into a new product. Describe this process in your own words; a minimum of 5 steps will be required to receive full points. (The process of burning the plastic, as a fuel is not an acceptable process answer for this question.)
Recycling is the manufacturing of waste materials to make new products. It involves collecting and treating discarded materials as raw materials. Recycling is important as it helps save earth’s precious resources through treating waste materials. It also helps the environment by saving energy and reducing pollution, creates the job and reduces the need for landfill and incinerators (Brown, Foote, Iverson, & Anslyn, 2011).
According to Brown et. al., (2011), plastics are often made from more than one kind of polymer. To aid identification, sorting and recovery of polymers a coding system has been developed based on the ‘Recycle Triangle’ which uses a series of numbers and letters, which is used during recycling.
Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET, PETE)
This is a plastic resin, normally produced for the textile industry as ‘polyester’. The purer form of the plastic is commonly used to make containers used for packaging a range of products such as beverages, drinking water, peanut butter, salad dressings, household cleaners and many others. This type of plastic is easily recyclable because the chain of polymer it contains can break down at low temperature. The fact that polymer chain is not degraded by the recycling process, PET can be recycled over and over for a long time until it becomes unusable (Brown, et. al., 2011).
The following are the general steps involved the process of recyclingPolyethylene Terephthalate (PET) (Stanitski, C., 2000):
1) It starts with collecting the discarded materials usually bottles.
2) Sorting- the bottles are sorted by hand or through automation, while removing unwanted materials from them such only clean bottles are left.
3) Cleaning- next the bottles are cleaned both inside and out. This is supposed to remove any residual liquid or dirt to avoid contamination.
4) The bottles can then be sorted further using infrared radiation methods so as to determine the types of polymers present. Sorting by colour, adds value to the plastic.
5) Shredding- the bottles are then shredded into flakes and washed again. The shredding step however may be omitted and the bottles melted and molded to a variety of shapes.
6) After shredding, the plastic is melted to produce small plastic granulates, or pellets
2) Even though all of the code 1 through code 7 plastics is recyclable, not all plastics are actively being recycled. Do some research and find 3 of the major issues that are currently blocking a more complete recycling process. Describe the issues.
According to Brown, et. al., (2011) the answer to this question has more to do with economics and consumer habits than with technological obstacles. The authors have identified the following issues as to why plastics are not exhaustively being recycled. These include:
i. The durability and chemical inertness of most plastics make them ideally suited for reuse, therefore the answer to this question has more to do with economics and consumer habits than with technological obstacles.
ii. Because curbside pickup and centralized drop-off stations for recyclable are just now becoming common, the amount used of used material available for reprocessing has traditionally been small. This limitation combined with need for additional sorting and separation step, rendered the use of recycled plastics in manufacturing expensive compared with virgin materials.
iii. Until recently, consumers perceived products made from used materials as being inferior to new ones, so the market for recycled products has not been large.
The increase in environmental concerns over the last few years, however, has resulted in greater demand for recycled products. As manufacturer adapt to satisfy adapt to satisfy this new market, plastic recycling will eventually catch up with the recycling of other materials such as glass and aluminum (Brown, et. al.,2011).
3) Plastics can be burned for fuel at a waste to energy plant, just like paper products. However, the energy return from plastics is not the same as paper products. Do some research and find out which has the higher energy return rate; the plastics or the paper products? Discuss the pros and cons of burning plastics versus paper products for their energy.
In the modern world, garbage can is burnt to generate electricity.Recent studies has concluded that burning waste plastic has lesser environmental damages to the than all other disposal techniques. The end products of combustion of these wastes are carbon dioxide, water, and even energy. The rate of energy return differs with the type of garbage. Research has revealed that plastics are excellent sources of energy when burnt for fuel at a waste to energy plant; exceeding that of paper products (Stanitski, C., 2000). This is because are plastics are made from petroleum and natural gas.
burning plastics vs. paper products, for energy; pros and cons
Pros
i. Burning of plastics or paper wastes can produce energy. However, plastics have higher energy return
ii. They both reduces the amount of garbage that is buried in landfills
iii. Burning of plastic can also prevent pollution. This is because burnt plastic produce electricity that can be used to make other plastic, thus providing alternative to coal which pollutes by emitting sulphur.
iv. Plastics last longer than paper. This means that even if it burnt for energy, plastics are stronger than paper and can be reused because much longer.
Cons
i. Causes environmental pollution- Burning garbage be it plastic or paper releases green house gases and the chemicals and substances present in that waste into the atmosphere.
ii. The practice of converting waste to energy plants is likely to hinder the recycling programs.
iii. Burning garbage both paper and plastic has ecological problem. Further production of these the products will require more exploitation of natural resources. For instance, more trees are likely to be felled in order to acquire raw materials for the paper, same with the plastic. Increased exploitation of resources will cause eventual depletion.
References
Stanitski, C. (2000) Chemistry in context: applying chemistry to society. McGraw-Hill
Brown, W., Foote, S., Iverson, B. & Anslyn, E. (2011) Organic Chemistry. Mason: Cengage Learning
Miller, G., (2007)Cengage Advantage Books: Sustaining the Earth: An Integrated Approach. Mason: Cengage Learning
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need to :::::: Good job. The assignment asked for the problems to be written in short essay format. All 3 problems were done in a list format.
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but as I said all answers are needed to be paraphrased, only paraphrase for all of them and 1&2 readjust what he is looking for
Thanks
need them within 24 hours please
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