Environmental Engineering Lecture 1 Dr. Hasan Hamouda

1. Environmental Engineering • Lecture 1 • Dr. Hasan Hamouda

2. What is Environmental Engineering Science? • We are concerned with the quality and availability of environmental resources and with the waste streams that impact them • Science…improve our understanding of natural processes • Engineering…use this understanding to develop and apply technologies that will maintain or improve environmental quality

3. What is an engineer? • Problem solver. • Specifically, one who uses science to solve real world problems. • SO, what about an environmental engineer? • Solves environmental problems using scientific tools

4. Environmental engineering is manifest by sound engineering thought and practice in the solution of problems of environmental sanitation, notably in the provision of safe, palatable, and ample public water supplies; the proper disposal of or recycle of wastewater and solid wastes; the adequate drainage of urban and rural areas for proper sanitation; and the control of water, soil, and atmospheric pollution, and the social and environmental impact of these solutions. Definition:

5. Furthermore, it is concerned with engineering problems in the field of public health, such as control of arthropod-borne diseases, the elimination of industrial health hazards, and the provision of adequate sanitation in urban, rural, and recreational areas, and the effect of technological advances on the environment (ASCE, 1977).

6. Environmental Engineering • Air pollution • Control devices • Permitting • Modeling • Water (surface and groundwater): • Treatment & disinfection • Storage and distribution • Dispersion • Quality • Wastewater • Solid Wastes • Hazardous Wastes • Radioactive Wastes • Integrated Systems • Pollution Prevention • Other – noise and light pollution

7. WATER QUALITY Engineering • Water treatment - take water from a source and subject it to treatment processes to make the water suitable for its intended use • Waste water treatment - after water is used, it is collected and treated to make it suitable to be returned to the environment

8. A first Water Quality Engineering Problem • 1854, outbreak of cholera in London • 10,000 deaths • Convinced city official to remove pump handle

9. Water Treatment Plants Thorton, CO Boulder, CO Polino Pass, CA Assignment1: visit http://www.epa.gov/OGWDW/kids/treat.html and go through the treatment processes on the website, and then draw your own schematic of all the processes.

10. How the Waste Water Treatment Plant Works

11. Waste Water Treatment Plants San Jose, CA Seattle, WA

12. A few problems that we need to solve! • RUN-OFF: Contamination of aquatic environments by fertilizers and pesticides in agricultural runoff • GROUNDWATER CONTAMINATION: Contamination of groundwater resources, especially by hazardous wastes • REUSE: Treating wastewater for reuse

13. AIR QUALITY Engineering • Apply science and technology to control adverse effects of air pollution on human health and welfare, on other organisms, on materials, or on ecosystems • Most efforts focus on emission sources since once pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere, there are no practical engineering techniques for removing them

14. Clear Day Hazy Day

15. Rocky Mountain National Park

16. Metal foundry refining in early industrial Germany, 1870s

17. We’ve come a long way baby???

18. Early 1900s, NY City

19. Kuwait, August 1990 Kuwait, February 1991

20. 3 April 2002 Pollution doesn’t have boundaries This dust plume passed over urban areas in China, Korea and Japan, cruised over the Pacific Ocean and eventually made its way to Alaska.

21. WHY DO WE CARE?? Some air pollutants cause adverse health effects, and we don’t like feeling bad or dying young. Two examples of particle collectors in southern California

22. Human welfare… Melon leaves damaged by ozone Statue damaged by acid rain Feedlot

23. A few problems that we need to solve! • ACID RAIN: Deposition of contaminants emitted into the atmosphere that have been converted to acidic species • OZONE HOLE: Depletion of stratospheric ozone by chlorine from CFCs • BIOMASS COMBUSTION: Exposure of women and children to emissions from biomass cook stoves in rural areas in developing countries

24. Warm-up Exercises Exhausting fossil fuel resources The 1980 global petroleum consumption rate of 135 x 1018 J per year, how long will it take to use up the estimated worldwide resource of this fuel? (In 1980, it was estimated that the earth’s petroleum resource amounted to 10 x 1021 J.) Assignment: Find out what is the most recent estimate of the earth’s petroleum resource and the most recent petroleum consumption rate.

25. Warm-up Exercises Carbon Monoxide from smoking cars Assume that all autos satisfy the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and produce no more than 9 g of CO per mile. The CO introduced to the atmosphere by cigarettes is on the average 50 mg/cigarette. If smokers consume 10 cigarettes (~1/2 pack) a day and autos are driven 20,000 miles per year on average, estimate how many smokers generate the same amount of CO as one automobile in a year.

26. HAZARDOUS WASTE Management • Creation, growth of the chemical industry during the 20th century established need

27. Hazardous if…corrosive, ignitable, reactive, toxic, radioactive, infectious…

28. Hazardous if…corrosive, ignitable, reactive, toxic, radioactive, infectious…

29. What needs to be done? • Develop, apply methods for proper use, treatment and disposal • Identify and remediate contaminated waste sites