Pollution Control

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Pollution Control

• EEP 255
• November 6, 2003

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POLLUTION

• Pollutants are undesired byproducts (typically
  matter) associated with production of desirable
  outputs
• Pollutants can affect welfare directly and
  indirectly in many ways direct human health
  impacts, indirect human health impacts, direct
  effects on resources/materials, indirect effects
  on resources through effects on ecosystem
  functions/services
• The final impacts depend on emission type,
  quantity,rate, fate and transport, exposure, dose
  response, stress factor etc. Complex
  interactions
• GOAL To reduce undesired impacts of economic
  activity.
• What options do we have?

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Output Production Function
Q Q(L, M, K)
Q - Quantity of product output L -
Quantity of labor inputs M - Quantity of
material inputs K - Quantity of capital
inputs Q( ) - function defining relationship
between quantity of inputs and output
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Waste Production Function
Q Q(L, M, K) W W(Q) W(Q(L,M,K))
W - quantity of waste (liquid, gaseous or
solid) W( ) - function defining relationship
between quantity of waste and quantity of outputs
and inputs (typically increasing with increase in
Q)
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Mass Balance Constraint
Q Q(L, M, K) s.t. Mass of W Mass of M - Mass
of Q
Conservation of Mass Total Mass (weight) in
Total Mass (weight) out
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Waste Management
Q Q(L, M, K) W W(Q) W(Q(L,M,K)) s.t. M
lbs. Q lbs. W lbs.
Proper Disposal
Recycling Technologies
Treatment Technologies
Goal is reducing harmful impacts of produced waste
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Waste (W) Management
Goal is reducing harmful impacts of produced waste
Q Q(L, M, K) s.t. W grams M grams - Q grams
Add L, M, K to safely store W
Add L, M, K to transform W into M and W
Add L, M, K to transform W into W
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Waste (W) Reduction
Q Q(L, M, K) s.t. W grams M grams - Q grams
Increase Q
Reduce M
Or reduce total Q
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Options for Reducing Quantity of Material. inputs
Use more L, less M, same Q
Use different M, same Q
Use more K, less M, same Q
Redesign Q, use less M
Q Q(L, M, K) s.t. W lbs. M lbs - Q lbs.
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Waste Reduction(Pollution Prevention)
Good housekeeping
Input substitution
Process modification
Product redesign
Q Q(L, M, K) W W(Q) W(Q(L,M,K)) s.t. M
lbs. Q lbs. W lbs.
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Pollution Prevention
Goal to produce less waste

• Good Housekeeping
• Prevent spoilage of materials
• Prevent spills of materials
• Material Substitution
• Use less toxic material inputs
• Process Modification
• Continuous casting of steel
• Product Modification
• Redesign product so it requires less material
  inputs
• (light weight cars-composites, nanotechnology)
• End use efficiency improvement
• Gasoline and fuel efficiency
• Electricity and appliance efficiency

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Pollution Abatement

• Waste Management (Transform W)
• Proper Disposal
• Treatment
• Recycling
• Waste Reduction (Reduce W)
• Good Housekeeping
• Material Substitution
• Process Modification
• Product Redesign
• Reduce Output (Q) End use efficiency
  improvement

(M) Pollution Prevention
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Pollution abatement actions taken to reduce the
harmfulness of waste (waste management) or reduce
wastes (waste reduction) to prevent damage from
release of untreated wastes into the environment
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Waste Emissions vs. Waste Abatement

• Emissions are releases of untreated waste to air,
  water, or land
• Abatement involves waste management and waste
  reduction

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Remediation is not Abatement

• Remediation is the clean up of waste already
  emitted into the environment
• Example Bioremediation uses soil bacteria to
  consume toxic contaminants in soil at an
  abandoned oil field

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Waste (W) Management
Goal is reducing harmful impacts of produced waste
Q Q(L, M, K) s.t. W grams M grams - Q grams
Add L, M, K to safely store W
Add L, M, K to transform W into M and W
Add L, M, K to transform W into W
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Types of Waste Management

• Disposal
• Landfills
• Hazardous Waste Facilities
• Treatment
• Physical technologies (separation)
• Chemical technologies (reactive)
• Thermal technologies (incineration)
• Biological technologies (bacterial conversion)
• Recycle
• Collection technologies
• Sorting and disassembly technologies
• Cleaning, reusing, repairing, or remanufacturing
  technologies

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Types of Waste Reduction (aka Pollution
Prevention)
Goal to produce less waste

• Good Housekeeping
• Prevent spoilage of materials
• Prevent spills of materials
• Material Substitution
• Use less toxic material inputs
• Process Modification
• Reduce number of times a material is handled
  (I.e., to reduce evaporation)
• Continuous casting of steel
• Product Modification
• Redesign product so it requires less material
  inputs

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Pollutant Classification

• Media based
• Air Pollutants (Clean Air Act)
• Water Effluents (Clean Water Act)
• Land disposal (Resource Conservation and Recovery
  Act RCRA)
• Hazardous
• Non-hazardous
• Residential (Municipal)
• Industrial
• Past wastes (Superfund-CERCLA)
• Thermal and radioactive Pollution

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Treating and Recycling Liquid Waste

• Physical treatment
• Filtration
• Evaporation ponds
• Sedimentation or settling tank
• centrifuge
• reverse osmosis
• flocculation
• Chemical treatment
• Oxidation/ Reduction, neutralization
• electrolysis (precipitates metals on electrodes)
• Biological treatment
• biological organisms consume organic wastes
• Thermal treatment
• recovery boiler in paper industry

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Treating and Recycling Gaseous Waste

• Physical treatments (for particulate removal)
  gravity settlers, cyclone separation, baghouse
  (fabric bag filters), wet water scrubbers,
  electrostatic precipitators (for high temperature
  gases), adsorption(activated carbon),
• Condensation for vapors
• Chemical treatments wet scrubbers, oxidation and
  reduction reactions (incineration), catalytic
  conversion

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Treating Solid Waste

• Compacting to reduce volume
• Thermal treatment reduces volume and recovers
  energy
• High temperature can also reduce toxicity