The Water-food-energy Nexus ― Processes, Technologies, and Challenges

Demand for fresh water, energy and food will increase significantly over the next few decades. Agriculture accounts for 70% percent of total global fresh water use, while food production and supply chain consume about 30% of total energy consumed globally, as energy is used to produce, transport and distribute food as well as to collect, transport and treat water.This book discusses this water-energy-food nexus and describes in depth the challenges and processes involved in efficient water and energy production and management, wastewater treatment, and impact upon food and essential commodities.

I.M. Mujtaba is a Chartered Chemical Engineer and is a Fellow of the IChemE. He is currently an executive member of (a) IChemE Computer Aided Process Engineering Subject Group (Secretary 2000-2010), (b) the European Committee for Computers in Chemical Engineering Education (Secretary 2007-2010; Chair 2010-2013) and (c) Chair of Academic Excellence Sub-committee, Alumni Vision for Chemical Engineering Education at BUET, Bangladesh (2007-). He leads the Mechanical and Process Engineering research group in the School of Engineering at Bradford University, UK. Professor Mujtaba was the member of the University Senate from 2002 to 2010.

N.O. Elbashir is Associate Professor at Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) and the Director of its Fuel Characterization Lab. He has over 16 years of research and teaching experience. Before joining his current position he was part of BASF Catalysts R&D team in Iselin, New Jersey. He is leading multimillion dollar research projects in collaboration with academia and industry with a focus on the design of advanced reactors, processes, and products in XTL technology (gas-to-liquid, coal-to-liquid, and biomass-to liquid). He holds several US and European patents and numerous publications. The scholarship of his research activities has been recognized by awards from the Gordon Research Conferences, BASF Corp., the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Texas A&M University, and the 2012 Qatar Foundation’s Best Energy and Environment Program of the Year.

R. Srinivasan is Professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar. Prior to this, he was Associate Professor at National University of Singapore and Principal Scientist at Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences. He received his PhD from Purdue University. Dr. Srinivasan's research interests include safe and environmentally benign process design and operations, supply chain management and enterprise optimization, and computational systems biology.