Chemical engineering and environment protection

Written by Yiran  Li

During the 1960s, a number of industrial accidents and widely publicized pollution incidents occurred, which began to galvanize public opinion. Ever since the nascent environmental movement began to take shape, industry has been considered the culprit, and the chemical engineer has long been vilified as the perpetrator. Chemical engineers have been misunderstood for decades. In fact, chemical engineers do a lot to protect the environment and control pollution. “Their broad academic training in both chemistry and engineering, however, makes it possible to harness the basic principles of chemical, physical and even biological conversions to reduce the volume and toxicity of existing airborne or waterborne pollutants and solid waste streams, to design or redesign processes inherently less polluting than their historic counterparts, and to develop more effective monitoring devices and control strategies to increase detection efficiency and to ensure optimal conversion rates (and thus minimize byproduct waste streams).” (ChE)

Chemical engineers make a great contribution to control water pollution and air pollution. Chemical engineers developed many well-known ways to slow down water pollution like vacuum or pressure filtration, centrifugation, membrane-based separation, distillation,  carbon-based and zeolite-based adsorption, and oxidation treatments.

Also, engineers now start to control all the pollution by redesigning the production progress. They use commercial-scale technologies and systems to purify raw water for drinking, making it suitable for human consumption.

A sage once wrote, “The Earth was not given to us by our grandparents, but lent to us by our grandchildren.” It is the collective responsibility of the world community to protect the environment and our natural heritage.

Reference

http://www.chemicalengineering.org/enviro/water.html

http://www.chemicalengineering.org/docs/cheme-environmental.pdf