Natural and man-made changes in the environment create a very complex picture. This book analyzes this picture and provides snapshots of different areas of interest and to make suggestions for future work on cleaning and stabilizing the Earth's environment. Starting with conventional energy generation and moving on to renewable energies, this book analyzes and calculates their environmental impact and the lesser known aspects of their "cradle-to-grave" life cycle such as the irreversible environmental damage done during the manufacturing of solar and wind equipment and during the installation, operation, and decommissioning of large scale hydro, solar, and wind power plants.

Controlling the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOC) became a very prominent environmental issue with the passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, and will continue to be an environmental priority through the next decade. No single technology has played as important a role in the control of VOC emissions as thermal oxidation. It has the ability to destroy VOCs in a one-step process that produces innocuous by-products. Design of Thermal Oxidation Systems for Volatile Organic Compounds provides all the information needed for developing a thermal oxidation design in a single reference. It covers design, operation, and maintenance as well as the principles behind the classification of volatile organic compounds as hazardous waste. The author explores the primary purpose of thermal oxidizers and discusses their limitations. The book provides: practical, complete, and concise thermal oxidizer design principles an outline of state-of-the-art design principles a practical rather than theoretical approach real industrial examples in each chapter With the new regulations that affect VOC emissions, engineers from such diverse fields as oil refining, chemical distillation and separation processes, and pharmaceutical industries will need to design and implement thermal oxidation systems. Design of Thermal Oxidation Systems for Volatile Organic Compounds provides a reference to the entire design process, from conceptualization to operation and maintenance.