Springer Measuring Progress Towards Sustainability: A Treatise for Engineers

This book is a state of the art treatise on what has been done so far on measuring sustainability for decision making. Contributions will appeal to engineers and scientists engaged in technology development, assessment, and verification. Researchers working on engineering sustainability are likely to get ideas for further research in quantifying sustainability for industrial systems. Concepts described can be applied across all scales, from process technology to global sustainability; and challenges and limitations are also addressed.   Readers will discover important insights about simulation-based approaches to process design and quantitative measurement techniques of sustainability for business and technology systems. Most of the examples and case studies are from chemical enterprises but the methodologies presented could be applicable to any system for which quantitative data for indicators are available, and the choice of the set of indicators of sustainability are comprehensive. From the Back Cover This book is a state of the art treatise on what has been done so far on measuring sustainability for decision making. Contributions will appeal to engineers and scientists engaged in technology development, assessment, and verification. Researchers working on engineering sustainability are likely to get ideas for further research in quantifying sustainability for industrial systems. Concepts described can be applied across all scales, from process technology to global sustainability; and challenges and limitations are also addressed.   Readers will discover important insights about simulation-based approaches to process design and quantitative measurement techniques of sustainability for business and technology systems. Most of the examples and case studies are from chemical enterprises but the methodologies presented could be applicable to any system for which quantitative data for indicators are available, and the choice of the set of indicators of sustainability are comprehensive. About the Author Subhas Sikdar (retired) was the Associate Director for Science at EPA’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory. He received his PhD in chemical engineering from the Univ. of Arizona (1975) and has worked for Occidental Petroleum, General Electric, NIST, and EPA, mostly in R&D management. During his technical career he has authored or coauthored more than 80 journal papers, edited 13 books, and has been awarded 26 U.S. patents. He is a Fellow of AIChE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers, and has received AIChE’s Research Excellence in Sustainability Award and the Lawrence K. Cecil Award in Environmental Chemical Engineering. He is the founder/editor of Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy and a section editor of Current Opinions in Chemical Engineering.   Dr. Debalina Sengupta (Associate Director, Gas and Fuels Research Center, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, College Station, TX) Debalina Sengupta obtained a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Chemical Engineering from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India, in 2003. In 2010, she earned the Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemical engineering from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her research was on the optimization of industrial complexes and sustainability analysis using Total Cost Assessment Methodology. Following this, her first book titled “Chemicals from biomass: integrating bioprocesses into chemical production complexes for sustainable development” was published by CRC Press in the Green Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Series in 2012. After her PhD, she worked at the National Risk Management Research Laboratory of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati, OH as an ORISE Post Doctoral Fellow in the Sustainable Technology Division