Water-Food-Energy Nexus : Processes, Technologies, and Challenges

Exponential growth of the worldwide population requires increasing amounts of water, food, and energy. However, as the quantity of available fresh water and energy sources directly affecting cost of food production and transportation diminishes, technological solutions are necessary to secure sustainable supplies. In direct response to this reality, this book focuses on the water-energy-food nexus and describes in depth the challenges and processes involved in efficient water and energy production and management, wastewater treatment, and impact upon food and essential commodities. The book is organized into 4 sections on water, food, energy, and the future of sustainability, highlighting the interplay among these topics. The first section emphasizes water desalination, water management, and wastewater treatment. The second section discusses cereal processing, sustainable food security, bioenergy in food production, water and energy consumption in food processing, and mathematical modeling for food undergoing phase changes. The third section discusses fossil fuels, biofuels, synthetic fuels, renewable energy, and carbon capture. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of the future of sustainability, including coverage of the role of molecular thermodynamics in developing processes and products, green engineering in process systems, petrochemical water splitting, petrochemical approaches to solar hydrogen generation, design and operation strategy of energy-efficient processes, and the sustainability of process, supply chain, and enterprise.

Iqbal M. Mujtaba is a Professor of Computational Process Engineering and currently the Head of School of Engineering at the University of Bradford. He obtained his BSc Eng and MSc Eng degrees in Chemical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) in 1983 and 1984 respectively and obtained his PhD from Imperial College London in 1989. He is a Fellow of the IChemE, a Chartered Chemical Engineer, and the current Chair of the IChemE's Computer Aided Process Engineering Subject Group. He was the Chair of the European Committee for Computers in Chemical Engineering Education from 2010-2013.

Rajagopalan Srinivasan is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Institute Chair at Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar. Previously, he was with the National University of Singapore and AStar’s Institute of Chemical & Engineering Sciences. Raj received his B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 1993 and PhD from Purdue University in 1998, both in Chemical Engineering. He was a research associate in Honeywell Technology Center, Minneapolis, before joining NUS.

Nimir Elbashir holds a joint appointment as a Professor in the Chemical Engineering Program and the Petroleum Engineering Program at Texas A&M University at Qatar and he is the Director of Texas A&M’s Gas and Fuels Research Center; a major research center that involves 27 faculty members from both the Qatar and College Station campuses of Texas A&M University (http://gfrc.tamu.edu/). He has extensive research and teaching experience from four different countries around the world, including his previous position as researcher at BASF R&D Catalysts Center in Iselin, New Jersey.