Sustainable Engineering, Energy, and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities

This book takes a unique interdisciplinary look at the latest developments, advances, and trends in the interrelated areas of sustainable engineering, energy, and the environment, focusing on environmental engineering for renewable and green energy. It looks at new research and studies on a variety of topics in green nanotechnology, green processing and solar energy, sustainable energy policies, biofuels, fuel cells, and much more.

The first section of Sustainable Engineering, Energy, and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities looks at myriad issues in sustainable energy, such as sustainable urbanism through space planning and residential building design, a method to convert vibrations from mechanical work into power, energy grid maintenance, mathematical modeling and time analysis of various mechanical activities, and more. Topics on sustainable energy include voltage systems for stand-alone nanogrids, new sources for biodiesel production, solar energy conversion, protection equipment for windmill towers, etc. The section on sustainable environment explores issues such as industrial water recycling, regeneration of spent-activated carbon in pharmaceutical production, smell mitigation and recovery of fuel from waste, the water footprint of agriculture, etc.

Key features

• Presents advances and developments in the areas of engineering, energy, and environment under sustainable development
• Examines potential issues of understanding of green buildings and their energy efficiency
• Presents case studies on sustainable urbanization
• Presents novel clean technology applications for attaining environmental sustainability
• Assesses green auditing and natural capital accounting
• Describes relevant experimental techniques

This book features important contributions from scientists, academicians, and professionals on the latest developments and advances in the interrelated fields of sustainable engineering, energy, and environment.

Kailas L. Wasewar, PhD, has been in the Chemical Engineering Department of the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT), Nagpur, India, for the last 12 years and was Head of the department for two tenures. He was also a visiting Professor at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. He has more than 20 years of industrial, research, and teaching experience gained at various reputed organizations, such as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, India, and the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani. Presently he is Associate Dean of Education Technology & Library at VNIT. Recently Dr. Wasewar has been included in the world’s top 2% of scientists in chemical engineering as per a survey done by Stanford University. His world rank is 369 (top 0.66%) and 18th rank in India in chemical engineering. Dr. Wasewar has more than 200 journal publications, with over 6,000 citations. His h-index is 48, and his i-10 index is 124. He also has three granted patents to his credit. He has guided many PhD, MTech, and BTech students. He has delivered more than 55 invited expert lectures at various conferences, workshops, and seminars and has been a reviewer for various international journals and is a member of editorial board/advisory boards of several national and international journals.

Sumita Neti Rao, PhD, is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Chemistry at the Priyadarshini Institute of Engineering and Technology, Nagpur, India, run under the banner of Lokmanya Tilak Jankalyan Shiksha Sanstha. She is also Dean of Academics of the Institute. She has 28 years of research experience and 21 years of teaching experience. Her main areas of research are homogeneous/heterogeneous catalysis, synthesis and characterization of coordination compounds and their zeolite variants for applications in catalysis and green synthesis, wastewater treatment using the application of advanced oxidation processes, regeneration of spent activated carbon, and waste utilization. She has published over 40 research papers in international and national research journals and has four patents to her credit. She has participated and presented her research at several international and national conferences and won a best paper prize. She has worked as principal investigator for industrially funded projects and consultancies.