Cost Engineering for Pollution Prevention and Control

Paul Mac Berthouex, Linfield C. Brown

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367710606
• eBook ISBN: 9781000360936
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Derecho medioambiental

Environmental engineers work to increase the level of health and happiness in the world by designing, building, and operating processes and systems for water treatment, water pollution control, air pollution control, and solid waste management. These projects compete for resources with projects in medicine, transportation, education, and other fields that have a similar objective. The challenge is to make the investments efficient – to get the best project outputs with a minimum of inputs. Cost Engineering for Pollution Prevention and Control examines how to identify the best solution by judging alternatives with respect to some measure of system performance, such as total capital cost, annual cost, annual net profit, return on investment, cost-benefit ratio, net present worth, minimum production time, maximum production rate, minimum energy utilization, and so on.

Key Features:

• 
  
  

• Explains how to estimate preliminary costs, how to compare the life cycle costs of alternative projects, how to find the optimal balance between capital costs and operating costs.

• 
  
  

• Emphasis is placed on formulating the problem rather than on the mathematical details of how the calculations are done.

• 
  
  

• Provides numerous practical examples and case studies.

• 
  
  

• Includes end-of-chapter exercises dealing with water, wastewater, air pollution, solid wastes, and remediation projects.

The important concepts presented in this book can be understood by those students who have taken an introductory course in environmental engineering. Advanced knowledge of process design is not required. The material can also be utilized by engineers, managers, and others who would benefit from a better understanding of how engineers look at problems.

1 An Introduction to Cost Engineering

Cost binds a variety of components and considerations into an understandable whole. What all engineering projects have in common is the competition for resources and the challenge to efficiently invest the resources that are available. Cost engineering is about methods that are used to evaluate investments so that available monies are used wisely.

The fundamentals are estimating costs, making economic comparisons of alternative solutions, financing construction and facility operations, and financial management of projects. Some special methods are formulating and solving problems to minimize costs, optimizing processes by experimentation, building statistical models, and engineering to accommodate uncertainty, variability, and reliability.

These methods and concepts apply to all engineering disciplines and specialties, to private and public works projects, and to decisions in business and personal finance. This book shows how they are used to solve pollution prevention and control problems.

1.1 Health and Happiness

Albert Einstein said that the environment was “everything that is not me.” For “me” to be healthy and happy, everything that is “not me” must be healthy and happy. We disturb the environment as we draw from it food, water, shelter, clothing, and energy for our material needs, and as we dispose into it our wastes. Our disturbances must be managed carefully to avoid damaging our health and happiness.

The goal is to promote health and happiness. The difficulty for engineers, who like to measure and quantify outputs, is that there is no metric for measuring happiness, and not very precise ones for measuring healthiness. The things we can count and measure are at the bottom of the hierarchy of goals shown in Figure 1.1.

FIGURE 1.1 The hierarchy of goals for environmental and human health.

1.2 The Cost of Action and No Action

The cost of no action toward environmental protection is greater than the cost of action. Action delayed will increase future costs, endanger lives, and it may cause irreversible environmental damage. Action is required by law in all parts of the world, and the required actions improve environmental quality and protect public health.

Table 1.1 lists a few of the impacts of investing money to improve health and environmental quality.

TABLE 1.1 Examples of No-Action Impacts on Health, Environmental Quality, and Productivity

Impacts on	Examples of Impacts
Health	Increased burden of disease due to reduced drinking water quality
	Increased burden of disease due to reduced bathing water quality
	Increased burden of disease due to unsafe food (contaminated vegetables, fish, and other farm products)
	Increased risk of disease when working or playing in wastewater irrigated areas
	Increased financial burden on health care
Environment	Diminished recreational opportunities
	Decreased biodiversity
	Degraded ecosystems (e.g., eutrophication and dead zones)
	Increased greenhouse gas emissions
	Increased odors and unsightly conditions
Production	Reduced industrial productivity
	Reduced agricultural productivity
	Reduced market value of harvested crops due to unsafe irrigation
	Reduced tourism and the willingness to pay for recreational activities
	Reduced fish and shellfish catches, or reduced market value of fish and shellfish

1.3 About This Book

This book has 20 chapters that are organized into six sections.

Chapters 2–7: Planning and Cost Estimating

Capital costs buy fixed assets, such as equipment, land, and structures. The capital cost estimates in this book are the kind that is made early in the design process to evaluate project feasibility and budgets. The accuracy of cost estimates improves as design details are fixed and uncertainties are removed. Operating costs for labor, electricity, natural gas, and various chemicals keep personnel, equipment, and processes working.

Chapters 8–10: Economic Evaluation of Projects

Projects have a life cycle cost that consists of the capital costs and the operating costs. Capital costs often are a lump sum that is invested at the beginning of the project. Operating costs go on year after year. These two kinds of costs need to be combined into a single measure of the economic attractiveness of a project, or for several projects that are to be compared. One approach is to convert an initial cost into an equivalent series of annual costs; this is amortization of the capital cost. A second approach is to convert a stream of annual costs into an amount that is equivalent to a lump su...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Author Bios
• Chapter 1 An Introduction to Cost Engineering
• Chapter 2 Defining the Engineering Problem
• Chapter 3 Planning for the Future
• Chapter 4 Capital Cost Estimates
• Chapter 5 Operating Costs
• Chapter 6 Cost Indexes
• Chapter 7 Economy of Scale
• Chapter 8 The Time Value of Money
• Chapter 9 Depreciation and Asset Valuation
• Chapter 10 Financing Capital Costs
• Chapter 11 Financial Management for Operations
• Chapter 12 Utility Service Revenues and Rate Making
• Chapter 13 Financial Management for Engineering Projects
• Chapter 14 Optimization of Linear Models
• Chapter 15 Optimization of Nonlinear Problems
• Chapter 16 Building and Fitting Statistical Models
• Chapter 17 Experimental Methods for Engineering Optimization
• Chapter 18 Designing under Uncertainty
• Chapter 19 Monte Carlo Simulation
• Chapter 20 Designing for Safety and Reliability
• Chapter 21 References and Recommended Reading
• Chapter 22 Appendix AStaged Construction for Linear Growth
• Chapter 23 Appendix BEconomy of Scale Factors
• Chapter 24 Appendix CFactors for Economic Calculations
• Chapter 25 Appendix DInterpreting the LINGO Solution Report
• Chapter 26 Appendix EGenerating Random Numbers in Excel
• Index