A First Year Engineering Experience In Sustainable Design

For the past fifteen years, Brazil has been producing fuel ethanol from sugarcane, thereby decreasing their overall gasoline consumption by 50%. With decreasing oil supplies and increasing fuel costs, many countries hope to duplicate Brazil’s success. However, sugarcane, the ethanol staple crop in Brazil, does not cultivate well in other climates. Therefore, an effort must be made to determine the process feedstocks for different regions of the world. In the Spring of 2008, first-year engineering students at Michigan Technological University will investigate the potential of fuel ethanol produced from lignocellulosic (woody) biomass. During the course of this project, students will utilize the “waste equals food” principles of sustainable design outlined by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Using these guidelines, students will learn to incorporate the principles of sustainable development in the design and simulation of an ethanol production facility. They will investigate the sustainability of the production of the ethanol product from a regional feedstock and the sustainability of the ethanol process by developing a facility to eliminate waste from the production process. This paper will describe the incorporation of the biomass-to-ethanol design project into our first year engineering program, the assessment methodology used and the expected educational outcomes of the project.