It is 2021 and you are a process engineer at a large oil refining company. The world is rapidly moving toward a hydrogen energy economy and your company has been trying to develop an efficient and costeffective way to extract hydrogen from crude oil. You have found a low-cost process, but it produces a considerable amount of undesirable chemical by-product pollutants. However, during your work on this project you also have discovered an effective and inexpensive way to extract hydrogen directly from seawater. You realize that revealing this process effectively would eliminate the world demand for petroleum and probably would cause serious financial damage to your company. What do you do?

a. Quit your job and start your own hydrogen producing company.

b. Talk to your supervisors and reveal your process to them to see if they wish to pursue implementing it as part of their company.

c. Contact a patent lawyer not associated with your current employer and try to patent this potentially lucrative new process.

d. Without your employer’s permission, publish an article in a well-read chemical or energy magazine revealing your process and giving it to the world free of charge.

Give your solution using the Engineering Ethics Matrix.