Pollution prevention is practiced in industry, but there appears to be no coherent and generally applicable principles of pollution prevention about which to organize instructional materials. The literature abounds mainly with anecdotal and disconnected accounts of successful pollution prevention campaigns. There is a need for educational material on pollution prevention. Our goal is to design a course and prepare teaching materials suitable for students from all engineering disciplines. Environmental engineering texts on pollution control summarize state-of-the art knowledge in a way that does not foster innovation because (1) they compartmentalize the treatment of wastewater, solid wastes, gases, hazardous substances, etc. and (2) they typically do not deal with pollution prevention and waste minimization. Chemical and mechanical engineering texts on manufacturing process design typically ignore the production of pollutants and pollution prevention. The systematic coordinated view that is so valuable in solving real problems is not fostered by division along these boundaries. This approach fails to convey to the young engineer the notion that certain fundamentals apply to all processing systems. We seek to amalgamate the subdivisions of process design, pollution prevention, and pollution control, and integrate the management of various physical forms of pollutants. The principles of pollution prevention common to all fields of engineering involve the intelligent management of materials, energy, and chemical reactivity. These principles guide the engineer in the search for superior manufacturing processes. These rules of thumb are constrained by the physical laws of conservation of mass, conservation of energy, and the principles of managing chemical reactivity. These principles serve to identify pollution prevention concepts that might be successful from those concepts that cannot be successful. The most important part of the instructional material will be ch apters on applications focusing on perhaps twenty areas of the economy. The applications will serve to identify and limit the specific techniques of mass ands energy balancing and the specific rules-of-thumb to be presented in the introductory materials. This method of instruction emphasizes the role of the engineer as a developer of technology that is economically competitive and environmentally responsible. The principles can be a generally applicable basis foe instruction in engineering. The final product will be a course syllabus with an instruction manual, including practice problems and exercises, that can be used to teach an integrated approach to pollution prevention and control. The ultimate product will be a textbook because this is the only way to have the course taught nationwide.
