ENGS 37

INTRODUCTION to
ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
Prof. Benoit Cushman-Roisin

We live in incredibly rich and prosperous times.

Never before has the typical human possessed the ability to control or
manipulate as many resources as today.

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 Think about this:

Today, one individual

can manipulate
an incredible amount
of resources
thanks to technology!

Everything is soon to be trash…

Time

Time

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… and return more wastes to our environment than ever before.

Clean-up is necessary.
Clean technologies should be designed.
Limits must be discerned.

That’s where
Environmental Engineering
comes in.

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What is Environmental Engineering?

The discipline is largely defined by problems rather than by technical/scientific methods.

Typical problems:
Remediation of a contaminated site (= fixing the past),
Treatment of a dirty effluent (= dealing with the present),
Pollution avoidance (= planning for the future).

Breadth, interdisciplinarity:
Systems thinking, various engineering disciplines, even non-engineering disciplines.

Challenges:
Avoidance of moving one waste from one phase to another
(ex. air to water or water to solid waste)
Prevention harder than treatment
Environmental benefit versus economic burden (trade-off).

Role of the public sector:

In other areas of engineering, a need creates a market, and the market drives
technology development. In environmental engineering, it starts with a problem, which
drives regulations, regulations create the market, and the market drives the technology.

Structure of the course

Context & Motivation

the Sustainability imperative
the role of engineers in sustainability

Preliminaries
Relevant quantities (concentrations, fluxes)
Material balances
Transport processes
Environmental chemistry

Forms of Pollution & Treatment Technologies

Water pollution → water-treatment technologies
Air pollution → air-quality technologies

Resource management → Risk assessment, Sustainability

Prevention methods → “Sustainable Engineering”

Design for Environment
Industrial Ecology
Energy conservation
Renewable forms of energy
Addressing climate change

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Business as usual won’t do. It is unsustainable, both in terms of
– procurement of new resources (upstream end)
– environmental capacity to absorb our consequences (downstream end).

New role for the

environmental engineer

Products

Consider this:

- Engineers are responsible for the Industrial Revolution.

- The Industrial Revolution has spread across the globe.
- There is a growing set of negative consequences, some local and some global.

Thus, it stands to reason that engineers are called to play a central role in
- amending current technological practices, and
- designing and deploying sustainable technologies.

Note: This does not require a return to the distant past.

A healthy (functional) planet is not necessarily a pristine (untouched) planet.

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Historical and geographical perspective

The historical roots of environmental engineering are for

the most part associated with effluent treatment and civil
engineering. Indeed, environmental engineering began
with “sanitary engineering” (= sewage treatment), and to
this date “Civil and Environmental Engineering”
departments are common in academia.

In general, awareness of water pollution preceded

awareness of air pollution, which itself preceded awareness
of solid wastes, especially hazardous wastes; and the
relative maturity of treatment technology is
water > air > solid waste > hazardous material.

In the developed world, effluent treatment technologies are widely applied and make possible the
population density and intensity of resource use that exist today. Further application of effluent-
treatment technologies in the industrialized countries offers diminishing returns, and pollution
problems associated with non-point sources (ex. agriculture, transportation), scarcity of land for
landfills, and resource availability assume increasing importance. The challenges are technical
and demand a change of paradigm away from excessive consumption.

In the developing world, the widespread lack of adequate effluent-treatment technology is commonly
the primary immediate technologically-accessible challenge impeding improved environmental quality.
The barriers to meeting this challenge are usually not technical, but involve financial, institutional,
infrastructure and, in some cases, cultural considerations.

http://www.lenoci.hu/projects.htm

Environmental remediation

= fixing the past by cleaning up

contaminated areas after wastes have
been released into the environment.

Environmental remediation typically focuses on toxic and hazardous substances and

involves far higher costs than those associated with effluent treatment prior to discharge.
There are also legal expenses associated with litigation, often concerning responsibility.

Environmental remediation involves chemical reaction, physical separation, or a

combination of these, and may be carried out either by removing contaminated material
for treatment/disposal at a separate location or in some cases may be accomplished in
place ("in situ") without such removal.

Treatment and transportation of hazardous materials is a highly regulated activity in the

U.S. and many other countries.

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Effluent Treatment

Handling wastes at present by designing

http://www.indiamart.com/enhanceenvirotech/
devices that treat effluents that would
otherwise pollute the environment

Technologies involve reaction, separation, or a combination of these, and may be

considered for pollutants arising in all phases of matter: gaseous, liquid, and solid.

Frequently, a given effluent treatment technology can be applied to wastes arising

from a wide diversity of processes. Thus for example, the design principles for an
activated sludge treatment system are largely the same whether the system is treating
domestic sewage or wastewater after manufacture of chemicals, paper, or food
products. Likewise, electrostatic precipitators can remove particles from dusty
airflows in a variety of technological processes.

Distinction needs to be made between so-called point sources (such as a power plant)
and distributed sources (such as traffic and agricultural runoff). Treatment of effluent
from distributed sources is far more complicated than that from point sources.

Design for environment

= planning for the future at the level of a

single product by consideration of material
inputs, energy consumption in
manufacturing, and environmental impacts
at time of disposal.

Design for environment includes the following aspects:

- Design for low-impact materials
- Design for energy efficiency
- Design for servicing and longevity
- Design for disassembly, recycling or composting.

The concept of designing products and processes to minimize environmental impacts is

a central element of industrial ecology.

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Industrial ecology

= planning for the future at the company’s

scale by consideration of material and
energy flows associated with industrial
activity.

Frequently industrial ecology focuses on analyzing the life cycle of a particular product
from resource extraction, to manufacture (which may involve multiple steps and is often
a primary focus of industrial ecology), use (often by individual consumers), and disposal
(including recycling).

http://blog.daum.net/film-art/13231852

Sustainable Engineering
= planning for the future at the global scale

Many believe that a transition to a society supported

by sustainable resources is one of the central
challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century.

Ultimately, the challenge is to support human society

without depleting resource stocks and without
accumulating wastes, especially wastes that have a
deleterious effect on the environment.

If a transition to reliance on sustainable resources is to occur, it will be the result

of the development and deployment of new processes and technologies within
the context of an understanding of the interaction between resource utilization,
consumption patterns, and environmental carrying capacity.

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 Sustainable Engineering, cont’d

Necessary to the sustainability objective is a global outlook of the economy on one hand
and of nature on the other. Central concerns include the depletion of non-renewable
resources on the upstream side and climate change on the downstream side of our
industrial activities.

Society

Resources Wastes
Renewability concern Assimilation concern
Technology Capital

“The Economy”

“The Natural World”

Source:
Mihelcic & Zimmerman, 2010

Fossil fuels

Yet to be defined!

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 Shift in scope and patterns

20th Century 21st Century

Environmental Issues Environmental Issues
Local Global

Acute Chronic
Obvious Subtle
Immediate Multigenerational
Discrete Complex

(Source: Mihelcic & Zimmerman, 2010, page iii)

Example of past local problems

Pittsburg
in 1906

Cholera outbreak in London in 1854.

John Snow, medical doctor, tracked
the infection to a single well on Broad
Street. Solution: He convinced the
city officials to remove the pump
handle.

Cuyahoga River
(Ohio) on fire in 1952

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ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

Environmental Engineering is a discipline of engineering devoted to the development and

application of scientific knowledge through technology to eliminate or minimize adverse
effects associated with human activities.

It operates at four different levels: remediation of contaminated sites, treatment of

effluents, pollution prevention, and care for future generations.

Environmental engineering
is fundamentally object-
focused, rather than tool-
based. It therefore draws The Problem
from all other engineering
disciplines that are apt to
bear on the desired
objectives. Pursuit of
pollution prevention and Influence of economic, social & cultural factors
sustainability further
implicate social, cultural and
economic considerations,
bringing the environmental civil mech chem electr control
engineer to collaborate with
policy makers and other
non-engineers.

ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER

The environmental engineer is a professional trained in the art of applying scientific

principles and technological means to avoid or reduce forms of pollution by human
activities. This includes possessing a knowledge of past and current engineering
practice and an ability to innovate.

Further, s/he is a professional, meaning that s/he is not only applying knowledge
but also bearing responsibility and using judgment.

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Selection of topics

It is impossible to include all the elements of environmental engineering

in a single course.

So, there is considerable judgment involved in selecting topics to address,

and it is quite possible that a course entitled Environmental Engineering elsewhere might
have a different emphasis and address largely different materials.

Thayer School has chosen topics for this course with the following objectives in mind:

 Provide a balanced view of the many elements comprising environmental engineering;

 Consider selected topics that can be covered to some depth of understanding

rather than mention a little bit about everything;

 Emphasize topics that can be approached analytically rather than descriptively;

 Include forward-looking topics, such as green design and renewable energy.

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