Page 99 - Plant design and economics for chemical engineers

GENERAL DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS 77
design-related functions, such as capital-cost estimating, process and equipment
design, and plant layout. It is particularly important to learn what is legally
required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSI-IA), and corresponding regulatory groups
at the state and local levels. As a minimum, every design engineer should
understand how the federal regulatory system issues and updates its standards.
Every design engineer must be certain that a standard being used has not
been revised or deleted. To be sure that a regulation is up-to-date, it must first
be located in the most recent edition of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).
Next, the Cumulative Lkt of CFR Sections Affected must be checked to see if
actions have been taken since the CFR was published. If action has been taken,
the Cumulative List will indicate where the changes can be found in the Federal
Register. The latter provides the latest regulations and legal notices issued by
various federal agencies.

Environmental Regulations
Several key aspects of the U.S. Federal environmental regulation as spelled out
in legislation entitled Protection of the Environment (Title 40, Chapter 1 of the
CFR) are listed in Table 7. This checklist must also consider applicable state
and local codes. Often these may be more stringent than the federal codes or
may single out and regulate specific industries.
Note that Part 6 of Title 40, Chapter 1, in Table 7 requires the prepara-
tion of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The National Environment
Policy Act (NEPA) requires that federal agencies prepare such a statement in
advance of any major “action” that may significantly alter the quality of the
environment. To prepare the EIS, the federal agencies require the preparation
of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The latter is required to be a
full-disclosure statement. This includes project parameters that will have a
positive environmental effect, negative impact, or no impact whatsoever. Gener-
ally, design engineers will only be involved with a small portion of the EIA
preparation, in accordance with their expertise. However, each individual should
be aware of the total scope of work necessary to prepare the EIA as well as the
division of work. This will minimize costly duplication, as well as provide the
opportunity for developing feasible design alternatives.
The preparation of an Environmental Impact Assessment requires deter-
mining what environmental standards require compliance by the project, obtain-
ing baseline data, examining existing data to determine environmental safety of
the project, preparing an effluent and emission summary with possible alterna-
tives to meet acceptable standards, and finally preparing the environmental
statement or report. Since it may require a full year to obtain baseline data such
as air quality, water quality, ambient noise levels, ecological studies, and social
surveys, emissions and effluents, studies should take place concurrently to avoid
delay in preparing the EIA. The emissions and effluents studies must include all
“significant” sources of pollution. Omission of data could cause inconsistencies