Course Number
545.672
Course Format
Onsite

This course inherently combines green engineering, alternative energy and CO2 capture and storage into a concentrated semester lecture. Green Engineering applies the cost-effective design, commercialization, and use of chemical processes in ways that minimize pollution at the source, and reduce impact on human activities and the environment. After general discussion of applying environmental principles into various chemical processes, this course will switch the gear to apply these green engineering ideas into the energy production that has increasing and critical importance to our modern world, how to minimize the pollution and CO2 emission. There are two ways to follow: 1. Alternative Energy, which uses alternative resources rather than the current dominant fossil fuel for energy production. Alternative energy includes solar, hydro, bioenergy, geothermal, tidal, nuclear energy and et al. The detailed production processes, the long term perspective, policy and advantages/disadvantages over their counterpart, fossil fuel, will be discussed. 2. Fossil fuel with CO2 Capture and Storage. CO2 capture methods such as chemical solvents/chemical looping, membrane, oxy fuel combustion will be discussed and their technical benefits/limitations will be studied. The storage will cover geological methods (coal bed and saline aquifer), enhanced oil recovery, ocean storage, terrestrial and others. The technical details, cost, future trends and national/international policy (carbon taxes/markets) will be discussed in this course.