Energy and the Environment (MIT-Pappalardo Series in Mechanical Engineering)

In an age of mounting energy crises, James A. Fay and Dan S. Golomb's Energy and the Environment offers a timely treatment of a critical problem in urban-industrial societies: the worldwide growth of energy use and the destructive relationship between this energy use and environmental degradation. This comprehensive text provides the scientific and technological background for understanding how our ever-increasing use of energy threatens the natural environment at local, regional, and global scales and how this threat could be mitigated by more efficient use of conventional energy sources and their replacement by renewable energy sources. Designed for upper-level undergraduate and first-year graduate students, Energy and the Environment is essential reading for students and professionals in energy and environmental sciences and technology.

Features


· Describes energy technologies and their effectiveness in transforming fossil, nuclear, and renewable energy into useful mechanical or electrical power


· Emphasizes the generation of electric power and the technological improvements that increase power generation efficiency and reduce air pollutant emissions from power plants


· Examines the use of energy in the transportation sector and how vehicle design and engine efficiency improvements could reduce fuel use and pollutant emissions


· Objectively surveys the field of renewable energy technologies and the prospects of increasing the share of renewable energy among all energy sources


· Analyzes the energy sources of toxic emissions to air, water, and land and their effects on environmental quality at local and regional scales


· Examines global climate change, energy consumption's contribution to it, and the salient technologies being developed to mitigate this effect


· Equips engineering majors, science majors, and professionals with the basic facts needed to develop solutions to these pressing environmental problems