Group 8: Green Engineering
Learning Objectives
​ Explain what green engineering is
​ Describe the importance and benefits of approaching green engineering from a design
perspective
​ Discuss the key strategies for sustainable design
​ Describe the components of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
What is Green Engineering?
Green engineering is the process and design of products that conserve natural resources, and
impact the natural environment as little as possible. The term is often applied to housing, but it
can be used for automobiles, lights or any other sort of system or device that requires
engineering, and incorporates sound environmental principles. Though green engineering is
somewhat more expensive, many countries, recognizing the value of such work, have begun to
offer tax breaks, and other incentives to those who incorporate its use.
(https://www.allthescience.org/what-is-green-engineering.htm)
Green engineering utilizes engineering processes and methods that minimize pollution, improve
a business' sustainability and decrease the potential for health issues caused by unsafe
manufacturing and design methods. Engineers may use many processes when green
engineering, including:
1. Waste reduction: Many commercial processes, such as manufacturing and shipping
products, may waste energy through inefficient manufacturing and delivery methods.
Green engineering seeks ways to minimize this waste, including finding new fuel
methods and minimizing unnecessary production steps that needlessly use energy.
2. Materials management: Materials management entails finding better and safer
materials for diverse engineering purposes, particularly in product design and
manufacturing. Engineers may identify new and safer materials or invent options to
integrate into their plans and find better and more efficient production methods.
3. Pollution prevention: Pollution prevention focuses on identifying a company's pollution
sources and minimizing their waste. Engineers may identify why pollution occurs, find
processing methods that decrease its spread, integrate newer and cleaner techniques
and enhance manufacturing and delivery cleanliness.
4. Product enhancement: Green engineers seek to improve the products or services
they're engineering while making them safer for the environment. This process may
include finding alternate energy sources that work better than traditional options or
identifying greener and more efficient manufacturing materials and methods.
Describe the importance and benefits…
What are the principles of green engineering?
Green engineers follow multiple principles that guide their design processes, including:
1. Holistic product creation: Green engineers may use system analysis and
environmental impact assessment tools when designing products. These tools help
identify how these changes affect a community and its environment before
implementation.
2. Protecting human health: All green engineering techniques strive to protect human
health and well-being. This principle may include identifying safer manufacturing
methods and chemicals that don't affect human health.
3. Minimize natural resource depletion: The world contains limited natural resources and
green engineers try to minimize their waste. They may focus on sustainable and
long-lasting products and recyclable materials to help.
4. Remain culture-centered: Cultures and different regions may respond to green
engineering changes in various ways. Engineers work to consider these beliefs and
integrate solutions that work for as many groups as possible.
5. Innovate and improve existing concepts: Engineering often includes taking known
products and methods and improving them. Green engineers, following this concept,
may take already successful processes and improve them.
6. Prevent problems first: Green engineers may focus on preventing problems before
they occur rather than solving them after they arise. When problems occur, green
engineers can find active and beneficial solutions.
7. Renew rather than deplete: Many professionals throw away products after minimal
use, which may cause unnecessary waste. Green engineers work to prevent that
problem by creating renewable and long-lasting products.
8. Minimize financial loss: Businesses require a profitable operation to remain open, and
green engineers work to improve a company's operations. Their methods strive to create
minimal financial loss and even foster economic growth when possible.
Discuss the key strategies for sustainable design
● If and when it is discarded, it must be biodegradable and durable enough to (over)make
up for the carbon footprint it left behind during creation. This is the tendency toward the
surroundings.
●
Human nature dictates that it must be cheaper (or equally priced) as the non-sustainable
solutions available, as well as being equivalent to or superior in terms of capacity and
design.
●
A sustainable design is one that has a minimal, or even preferable, positive, long-term
influence on the environment. Along with being advantageous to society and the
economy, it needs to be in harmony with the environment's ecological status.
●
Overusing resources is not permitted in sustainable development and design, but it is
possible in development and design and may lead to the degradation of environmental
components.
●
Sustainable development and design benefits the entire planet, whereas conventional
development benefits a specific location.
●
Sustainable design aims to lessen negative effects on the environment, the health, and
comfort of building inhabitants, enhancing building performance. Reduced use of
non-renewable resources, reduced waste, and the creation of healthy, productive
ecosystems are the fundamental goals of sustainability.
●
Future generations' demands are respected in sustainable development and design, but
they are undermined in conventional development.
●
Sustainable design principles include the ability to:
- optimize site potential
- minimize non-renewable energy consumption
- use environmentally preferable products
- protect and conserve water
- enhance indoor environmental quality
- optimize operational
- maintenance practices
Describe the components of LCA
Life cycle assessment (LCA), sometimes referred to as life cycle analysis, measures the
impacts on the environment associated with the life cycle of a product, process, or service.
Every part of a product’s life cycle – extraction of materials from the environment, the production
of the product, the use phase and what happens to the product after it is no longer used – can
have an impact on the environment in many ways. These parts of a product’s life cycle are
called life cycle stages. With LCA, you can evaluate the environmental impacts of your product
or service from the very first life cycle stage to the very last or to any life cycle stage in between.
LCA is a standardized methodology, which makes it reliable and transparent. The International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) provides standards for LCA in ISO 14040 and 14044.
These standards describe the four main phases of an LCA:
1. Goal and Scope Definition
-
The goal and scope definition step ensures that your LCA is performed
consistently.
An LCA models a product, service, or system life cycle. A model is a
simplification of a complex reality. As with all simplifications, this means that the
reality will be distorted in some way. The challenge for an LCA practitioner is to
make sure the simplification and distortions do not influence the results too much.
The best way to do this is to carefully define the goal and scope of the LCA study.
The goal and scope describe the most important choices, which are often
subjective. For instance, the reason for executing the LCA, a precise definition of
the product and its life cycle and a description of the system boundaries.
The system boundaries describe what is taken into the assessment and what is
left out. For instance, small amounts of ingredients that contribute little to the total
footprint can be left out of the scope of the study. Thus, the system boundaries
exclude this.
2. Inventory Analysis
-
In the inventory analysis, you look at all the environmental inputs and outputs
associated with a product or service. An example of an environmental input –
something you take out of the environment to put into the product’s life cycle – is
the use of raw materials and energy. Environmental outputs – which your
product’s life cycle puts out into the environment – include the emission of
pollutants and the waste streams for example. Together, this gives you the
complete picture of the life cycle inventory (LCI). The LCI is all about collecting
relevant data and modeling this data via inputs and outputs in a correct manner.
3. Impact Assessment
-
In the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), you draw the conclusions that allow
you to make better business decisions. You classify the environmental impacts of
all processes collected and modeled in the LCI and translate them into
environmental themes such as global warming or human health.
The most important choice you must make is how integrated you want the results
to be. Would you like a single score to show how sustainable your product is? Or
to be able to see whether your new design improves on CO2 emissions and how
this impacts the land use? This usually depends on how you would like to
address your audience and the ability of your audience to understand detailed
results.
4. Interpretation
-
During the interpretation phase, you check that your conclusions are
well-substantiated. The ISO 14044 standard describes several checks to test
whether the data and the procedures you used to support your conclusions. This
way, you can share your results and improvement decisions with the world
without any surprises.
(https://pre-sustainability.com/articles/life-cycle-assessment-lca-basics/)
https://www.accessscience.com/content/article/a299903