What Is Green Engineering?

“Green Engineering is the use of advanced measurement and control techniques to design, develop, and improve products and technologies resulting in environmental and economic benefits.”¹ The good news is that, just as environmental issues are becoming more and more critical to humankind, we now have affordable technologies that enable us monitor and manage our (bio-)systems, reduce the greenhouse gases we emit, lower the amount of energy we consume, and thereby reduce our costs while benefiting our planet. Every engineer is becoming a “green engineer” because all of us are now intent on reducing carbon footprints and in saving money by reducing the energy consumption of the products and processes we design and control.

How Is Green Engineering Done?

Today, an increasing number of scientists and engineers are designing complex feedback and control systems that enable them to:

1. Monitor multiple data feeds from a myriad of sensors that detect and capture analog signals (temperature, humidity, pH, gases, chemicals) in real time.

2. Analyze these streams of input in near real time.

3. Correlate the relationships among the inputs to create a dynamic model of a complex system.

4. Take compensating or corrective actions by sending signals to trigger actions based on real-time events, triggers, and thresholds.