Single-Course Engelsk 5 ECTS

Resource Engineering

Overall Course Objectives

Natural resources represent materials and entities that are obtained from the natural environment and provides a usefulness for society, e.g. minerals, metals, and nutrients. Consumption and management of these resources in society are tremendously important for the environmental impacts from society and the possibilities for future technological development. The course provides the necessary background to address resources from an engineering perspective and presents key aspects related to consumption, quality, management and recovery of resources in a circular economy. With focus on the environment, the course further provides an introduction to important resource characteristics, and introduces a range of engineering tools for evaluation of resources management in society, urban contexts and industrial processes.

See course description in Danish

Learning Objectives

  • Explain and be able to apply key definitions and terminology in relation to resources
  • Explain the main resource types with respect to important characteristics (e.g. availability, consumption patterns, and typical flows in society)
  • Identify important environmental impacts in relation to the main resource types
  • Describe key types of resource indicators for evaluation of resource consumption
  • Assess the criticality of resources for society and/or specific technological systems and discuss the dependence of specific resources in this context
  • Evaluate resource management in simple systems based on selected concepts, e.g. life cycle based indicators, exergy, material flows and ressource criticality
  • Explain the main challenges related to resource recovery and use of recovered resources
  • Apply the above concepts and methods for solving smaller assignments in relation to circular economy

Course Content

Today, most environmental impacts in society are associated with resource production, consumption and management of resources after the use-phase. The course provides students with an essential understanding of the role of resources in society, the most important environmental aspects related to resources, and how resources can be addressed from an engineering perspective. With focus on environmental aspects, the course addresses all key phases in the “life cycle” of resources, e.g. production, resource characteristics, consumption patterns, flows in society, and resource recovery and recycling. The course provides an overview of resource definitions, resource availability, depletion, criticality and functionality, typical resource flows in society, key economical aspects of resource management, challenges related to resource recovery, as well as introduces selected engineering tools related to resource systems, e.g. resource criticality, exergy, material flows and life cycle based indicators.

Teaching Method

Lectures, exercises, assignments, group work

Faculty

See course in the course database.

Registration

Language

Engelsk

Duration

13 weeks

Institute

Sustain

Place

DTU Lyngby Campus

Course code 12139
Course type Bachelor
Semester start Week 36
Semester end Week 49
Days Thurs 8-12
Price

9.250,00 DKK

Registration