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Griffin Consultants

On the Sustainability of Providing Water, Energy, and Food
 

Heriberto Cabezas US Environmental Protection Agency National Risk Management Research Laboratory Cincinnati, Ohio, USA & Pazmany Peter Catholic University Center for Process Systems Engineering and Sustainability Budapest, Hungary

The World is steadily moving into a major challenge. The challenge is how to provide for the growing and developing human population within the limits of one planet, the Earth, over the long term. The effort is known as sustainability. To explore this challenge, I will focus on the three closely linked issues of providing water, energy, and food. In addition, there is the issue of maintaining order and stability as necessary conditions for any kind of acceptable human existence. These issues, unfortunately, present critical but not well-bounded problems, and for that reason there are many more questions than answers. However, to explore the issues and their bounds, I will discuss what is known including some planetary limits and limits imposed by the known laws of Nature. This will include consideration of what exactly constitutes a sustainable system for water, energy, and food.  While many considerations are possible, these can be condensed to about six requirements roughly representing human well-being, burden on land, energy resource use, efficiency of energy use, economic value productivity, and system stability.  The application of these requirements to real systems will be discussed.  The lecture will conclude with some thoughts on approaches stand a chance of adoption under current and foreseeable future conditions.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this presentation are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

BIOGRAPHY:

Heriberto Cabezas serves as Senior Science Advisor to the Land and Material Management Division in the U.S. EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), and as Professor at the Institute for Process Systems Engineering and Sustainability at the Pazmany Peter Catholic University  in Budapest, Hungary.  He is Chair of the Engineers Forum on Sustainability, a workgroup of all of the major professional engineering societies.  His awards include: 1998 U.S. EPA Science Achievement Award in Engineering, 2007 Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, 2011 Research Excellence Award in Sustainable Engineering from the AIChE, ORD Sustainability Award (team) from the U.S. EPA, 2013 Lawrence K. Cecil Award in Environmental Chemical Engineering from the AIChE.  Dr. Cabezas holds a Ph.D. from the University of Florida in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a M.S. from the University of Florida, and a B.S. (magna cum laude) from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, all in chemical engineering.  He served as Embassy Science Fellow at the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb, Croatia in 2014. His publications include over ninety peer-reviewed articles and chapters, two edited books, and major software.  He is a Fellow of the AIChE, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Board Certified Member of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists. Dr. Cabezas’ current research interests focus on: (1) the design of sustainable chemical processes and supply chains, (2) the design of sustainable productions systems in the nexus of food-energy-water, and (3) global sustainability where he leads the international Workgroup on Global Sustainability from his appointment at the Pazmany Peter Catholic University.

Multi-scale Energy Systems Engineering
 

Professor Stratos Pistikopoulos, FREng Director, Texas A&M Energy Institute TEES Eminent Professor Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering Texas A&M University

Multi-scale energy systems engineering is a methodologic and generic framework to address complex energy and environmental problems via a holistic and system-based approach and arrive at realistic integrated solutions. This framework is used to tackle the problems existing in design, control, and operation of energy systems and their supply chains in an integrated manner. Optimal solutions are provided to the decision-makers for systems ranging from nanoscale, micro-scale, meso-scale to mega-scale levels over horizons that range from milliseconds to months or year. 

Methodologies in energy systems engineering include, superstructure optimization with high-fidelity and data-driven modeling, mixed-integer linear or nonlinear programming, global optimization, optimal design and control under uncertainty, and life-cycle assessment. These concepts and methods are illustrated by presenting their application to natural gas utilization  examples, including (i) optimal flowsheet design of ammonia-methanol coproduction from natural gas by using process synthesis techniques with simultaneous heat, power, and water integration, and (ii) supply chain optimization of natural gas to liquid transportation fuels (GTL) for nationwide, regional, and state-wide scales.

BIOGRAPHY:

Professor Pistikopoulos is TEES Eminent Professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University. He was a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, UK (1991-2015) and the Director of its Centre for Process Systems Engineering (2002-2009). At Texas A&M, he is the Director of the Texas A&M Energy Institute, the Course Director of the Master of Science in Energy, the Director of the Gulf Coast Regional Manufacturing Centre, and the Texas A&M Principal Investigator of the RAPID Manufacturing USA Institute on process intensification, co-leading the Modeling & Simulation Focus Area.
He holds a Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University and he worked with Shell Chemicals in Amsterdam before joining Imperial. He has authored or co-authored over 450 major research publications in the areas of modelling, control and optimization of process, energy and systems engineering applications, 10 books and 2 patents. He is a co-founder of Process Systems Enterprise (PSE) Ltd, a Fellow of AIChE and IChemE and the current Editor-in-Chief of Computers & Chemical Engineering. He is the past Chair of the Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) Division of AIChE and he serves as a trustee of the Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering (CACHE) Organization. In 2007, Prof. Pistikopoulos was a co-recipient of the prestigious MacRobert Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Computing in Chemical Engineering Award of CAST/AIChE. He received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University Politehnica of Bucharest in 2014, and from the University of Pannonia in 2015. In 2013, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK.
 

The contest is open to graduate and undergraduate students. All student posters must be submitted during the call for papers and must be accepted for the students’ poster session to be entered into the contest.

Posters for the contest will be displayed and winners will be announced at the general poster session on March 28, 2019. prizes will be given to first, second and third-place prize winners at the conference banquate.

Poster abstractc/extended abstracts must be submitted by November 15, 2018.

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