Role of Chemical

Engineering in Pollution
control.
What do chemical engineers working in the environment,
energy, and sustainability do?

• Chemical Engineers use their knowledge of physics, math, chemistry,

materials & energy balances, thermodynamics, kinetics, and transport
phenomena to sustainably provide the critical resources we need while
protecting the environment from irreparable damage. This work involves
transforming raw materials into useful products, generating energy,
measuring contaminant concentrations, capturing emissions, and generally
developing new processes to protect the planet.
• From water filtration and treatment innovations, to more efficient
photovoltaics and batteries, to increasing efficiency of all processes,
chemical engineering produces cutting-edge solutions to today’s most
pressing societal problems.
• Chemical engineers meet environmental challenges. They develop
advanced technologies, monitoring devices, modeling techniques,
and operating strategies that Reduce the volume and toxicity of
pollutants allowed to enter the air, waterways, and soil ;
Significantly reduce the negative environmental impact of
industrial facilities, power plants, and transportation vehicles; and
allow greater reuse of post-consumer and post-industrial waste
streams.
How?
• CLEAN WATER RESOURCES: Chemical engineers are
coming up with innovative ways of treating water so that it is safe
to consume and that water can be reused,they found ways to
remove harmful pollutants from all sources of water, be it a raw
source or contaminated wastewater and have developed much
more cost-effective methods to do this , they have purified water
from rivers and lakes so that we can have clean , potable drinking
water,They effectively treated municipal wastewater and sewage
to make it safe for reuse all methods reduced the amount of waste
water and keep safe water for consumption without depleting our
sources.
How?
• Improving air quality
• Air quality and climate change go hand in hand. Chemical
engineers who work with air quality help to save lives and clean
the environment they Create products such as filters to prevent
or clean up air pollution (car emissions, oil spills, etc.). They
have found ways to capture and neutralise air pollutants before
they are discharged into the environment they have reduced
harmful airborne emissions as sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen
oxides (NOx), mercury and unburned hydrocarbons which is
helping in less toxic air to breathe, they also design processes or
devices to test for dangerous chemicals in air or water
How?
• Improved recycling :
• Reducing waste and eliminating the need for more raw
material. Chemical engineers worked on effective ways
to recycle paper, plastics and more.for example, they
have developed ways to recycle aluminium with the use
of chemicals, which was a very challenging process as
compared to recycling stainless-steel,to produce one
tonne of aluminium for cans, five tonnes of bauxite is
needed which now is saved because of recycling.
How does chemical engineering relate to the
environment, sustainability, and energy?
• Problems in the energy, environment, and sustainability space
inherently involve a combination of molecular/chemical behavior
and process-level systems understanding .e.g. In carbon capture,
it's not just about making materials that absorb CO2. It's about
creating a process that uses those materials and regenerates them
in a cost-effective way, with sufficiently low energy that they
consume less CO2 than they produce .