Efficient Pollution Abatement

Removing pollutants from mixtures seeks to minimize costs. Often, in public enterprises like water systems, such pollutant removal must be accomplished as efficiently as possible and at a cost less than some proscribed maximum. This means that the pollutant concentrations must be managed to respect both their concentrations and their toxicity. To accomplish this, we suggest a strategy for estimating separation costs for any pollutant. We then show how this can be applied to achieve a desired total toxicity for a product stream containing a spectrum of pollutants.