Energy and The Environment: Scientific and Technological Principles (MIT-Pappalardo Series in Mechanical Engineering)

Now thoroughly updated in its second edition, Energy and the Environment: Scientific and Technological Principles addresses a central problem of urban-industrial society--the interconnectedness of energy usage and environmental degradation--by examining how the rapidly growing use of energy threatens the natural environment at local, regional, and global scales.

Authors James A. Fay and Dan S. Golomb describe fossil, nuclear, and renewable energy technologies and explain their efficiencies for transforming source energy to useful mechanical or electrical power. In particular, they emphasize electric power and the use of transportation vehicles, whose technological improvements increase energy efficiency and reduce air pollutant emissions. Fay and Golomb also analyze the source of toxic emissions to air, water, and land that arise from energy uses and their effects on environmental quality. They pay special attention to global climate change, the contribution made to it by energy uses, and the salient technologies that are being developed to mitigate this effect.

Ideal for upper-level undergraduate and first-year graduate students, as well as professionals in the fields of energy and environmental sciences and technology, Energy and the Environment: Scientific and Technological Principles, Second Edition, equips readers with the basic factual knowledge needed to develop solutions to these environmental problems.