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MSE481 : Designing Sustainable Products and Processes

Projects based on environmental sustainability. Project based teamwork. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA). Engineering economics. Environmental impact with emphasis on CO2 utilization. Identification of key technology drivers to reduce cost and environmental impact. Written and oral presentations of solutions.


Textbook: Production & Processing of Inorganic Materials: Evans/ De Jonghe

Course Topics:

  1. Materials in engineering design.
  2. Engineering economics, time value of money
  3. Depreciation, profitability, return on investment.
  4. Cost estimation
  5. Library/Technical and Economic Information Searching
  6. Patents and intellectual property
  7. Report writing
  8. Case histories in design
  9. Alternative processing
  10. Oral presentations
  11. Ethical, societal and legal aspects of design

Course Objectives:

  1. To teach students approaches to engineering design and the role of materials and their selection.
  2. To provide an overview of engineering economic principles and their consideration in design projects.
  3. To introduce technical and economic information searching procedures and their role in design.
  4. To provide an introduction to modern design procedures.
  5. To provide students with a methodology for preparing a project design, and then to present this result in a written and an oral report
  6. To include discussion of ethical, societal and legal issues which may arise in the design context.

Course Outcomes:

  1. Be able to problems on engineering economics involving time value of money and depreciation
  2. Be able to search and analyze patent information
  3. Demonstrate the ability to justify materials choices for engineering designs
  4. Be able to analyze and discuss cases in engineering ethics
  5. Working on a team with mentor, define, plan, an execute an engineering design project in MSE
  6. Be able to prepare a written report on the design project
  7. Be able to make an oral presentation on the design project.

Assessment Tools:

  1. Problem sets to test objectives #1-4
  2. Evaluation of design project
  3. Evaluation of written report for written communication
  4. Evaluation of oral presentation for oral communication