Materials and the Environment: Eco-Informed Material Choice

by Michael F. Ashby

Book Overview

Materials and the Environment is the first book devoted solely to the environmental aspects of materials and their selection, production, use and disposal. Written by Mike Ashby, one of the world's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1856176088
• ISBN13: 9781856176088
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive

Materials and the Environment is a comprehensive, well-researched book on the subject. If you ever wanted to know about the life-cycle of materials, this book is for you.

Excellent Introductory Textbook

This is a great textbook that would probably be appropriate for a first or second year undergraduate engineering or material science course. I do not have an engineering background, but I found was able to follow the text with just a knowledge of college level chemistry and math and an interest in the topic. The book is easy to read and not overly technical, so students should find it relatively enjoyable to read. There are many attractive and useful figures and tables throughout all the chapters that help demonstrate the book's main points. Furthermore, each chapter includes a list of additional readings and review/practice questions, which both students and teachers will likely find helpful. The text can also be used in conjunction with CES Edu 09 software, but it is by no means a requirement to using the book. The final chapter contains over 100 pages of material profiles; this makes to book a good reference that students might want to hang on to. Even if the chapters on topics like legislation and eco-audits become out of date in a few years, the basic concepts presented throughout the text and the material profiles at the end give this textbook long-term usefulness.

Solid Textbook for Instructors to Use

While this text is written in a clear, simple fashion this is not a book for the average consumer but for students of engineering and materials sciences. My guess is that this is a second semester or second year sort of textbook since it lacks a glossary so the student must have mastered the lingo of those fields. Each chapter has well notated graphics and charts, a good selection of photographs, and real life examples. It end with a brief summary, a list of further readings, then a set of exercises which again require a basic understanding of engineering math. There are exercises both to use with the book and supplemental computer program that you can get but which I did not have the opportunity to look at. Another audience which may appreciate this book is current engineers and material scientists because it has a good 100 page summary of different materials currently available for use. These are presented in an unbiased way unlike information you'd get from a manufacturer.

Materials Science and Environmental Issues

Although this is of course a textbook aimed at materials science students, it is also of real interest to many others. I got it out of curiosity, as I teach art, archaeology and environmental ethics. It is good to stretch the mind. I found this book had elements that informed each one of the classes I teach, and so think it is worth taking a closer look at what the textbook covers and summarize it for others for whom this is an arcane area of study. What is material science and design about, and how does it intersect environmental issues? What can I learn from the book? As a layperson, I found the text invaluable in helping me close the gap on a better understanding of an area that is critical for scientists, educators, environmentalists, industry, and policymakers to understand. Sometimes people disdain textbooks, but this book is an excellent example of how textbooks can bring wide-ranging related materials and synthesize them into one book. This is a rather lengthy summary, so I apologize in advance, but I think some might find this useful. Chapter 1, "Introduction: Material Dependence" - A brief history of materials, learned dependency and reliance on nonrenewable materials, history of increasing dependence on materials and energy; most materials come from nonrenewable resources, which though voluminous, are being consumed at ever greater rates due to population increase and increasing global standards of living. I noted with interest Figure 1.1 which shows the history of when materials were first used, from the Stone Age to nano materials of today. This hooked me as an archaeologist. The great switch from dependence on renewable to nonrenewable materials during the start of the industrial revolution (Fig. 1.2). Chapter 2, "Resource Consumption and its Drivers"- Resource consumption, exponential growth; doubling times, reserves as resource base and resource life: explanation and modeling; the life cycle of products- extraction, synthesis, manufacture, transport, use, disposal or recycling; Fig. 2.1- annual world production of 23 materials on which industrialized society depends, for example; world consumption of energy by source and use, types of energy, efficiency factors; water demands; factors that move resources into and out of resource classification: commodity price, improved technology, production costs, legislation (environmental laws), and depletion, the latter including resource criticality (time to exhaustion) and interaction with market forces. Chapter 3, "The Materials Life Cycle"- The material life cycle; life cycle assessment (LCA) details and difficulties; a streamlined LCA matrix for assessment (material resources, energy use; strategy for eco-selection of materials; LCA software available Extraction/production, manufacture, use, disposal (includes recycling). Chapter 4, "End of First Life: A Problem or a Resource?"- The question of waste and what to do with it- landfill, combustion, recycling, reengineering, reuse- What

Excellent work by Material Selection guru

Only Ashby could have written a book like this. He is the guru of Material Selection and has authored several books on this topic. His "Material Selection in Mechanical Design" is a required read in almost all of the Mechanical/Materials Engineering programs. I am a Materials Engineer, but not in a technical role anymore. However, being in the energy industry I got interested in this book and found it to be very useful and helpful. You certainly must have some engineering background to understand the technical depth, charts, and material properties described by Ashby. Ashby has upgraded his material selection strategy by adding following aspects: - Embodied Energy per unit volume in the material - Amount of Carbon released in atmosphere by a certain material. Right from the start he has successfully developed his point by stressing on the importance of energy required to synthesize different materials, and the amount of Carbon released in this process. The data used in the form of tables, charts, etc. is very convincing. I liked mainly Chapter 8, 8, & 10 which form the main meat of this book. These are Selection Strategies, Eco-Informed Material Selection, and Sustainability respectively. In one review here, it is said that the some technical data in this book is not correct. I have not gone in that depth to cross-check the values/data-points. Exercises at the end of each chapter are good and thought-provoking. Overall, I think this will make a great read for the engineers who need to make an "eco informed material choice".