Overview of Environmental Engineering Flashcards
What do Environmental Engineers do?
- Design systems to address environmental issues (prevention or remediation)
- Optimize systems to mitigate environmental impacts
- Measure, monitor, and control environmental systems
- Work with regulatory bodies to develop regulations
- Carry out inspections for compliance with environmental regulations
- etc.
Name the 2 types of water and how much of them there are:
Fresh water (2%)
Salt water (98%)
What does the term air pollution mean?
Where do most air pollutants come from?
Air pollution refers to “The release of pollutants into the air that are detrimental to human health and the planet”
Most air pollutants come from burning fossil fuels to generate energy
What are some sources of air pollution?
Nature:
- Wildfires
- Volcanos
- Lightning
Area:
- Cities
- Livestock
- Fertilizers
- Oil & Gas
- Stationary:
- Industry
- Power
- Plants
- Sewage Treatment
Mobility:
- All of the transportation
What are some of the air pollutants?
- Lead
- Carbon Monoxide (CO)
- Sulfur Oxides (SOx)
- Nitrogen Oxides (NOx)
- Particulate matter (PM)
- Ozone
- Volatile organic compounds
- Biological pollutants
Describe Air Quality Control:
- Prevention from source
Control/treatment:
- Scrubbers
- Filters
- Combustion
- Absorbers
- Adsorbers
How is waste catagorized?
There are 3 catagories of waste:
- Solid waste
- Waste water
- Emission to the air
Additional categorization:
- Source
- Type of waste (plastic, metal. etc)
Destination
What are some solid waste disposal methods we used in HISTORY and CURRENTLY?
Before:
- Burying Garbage (we didn’t have the same amount of plastic before)
Current:
- Landfills
- Incineration
- Diversion
- Hazardous disposal sites
What is energy use for in the world and in our homes?
World:
- Transportation
- Manufacturing
- Residential
- services
- other industries
Home:
- space heating
- residential appliances
- water heating
- Other
What are some methods of electricity generation?
- Hydroelectricitiy
- Fossil Fuels
- nuclear
- winds, biomass, solar, etc.
What is a customer statement? What are the 2 scenarios?
The requirements and expectations of a product, where the needs can be feasible or unfeasible
- Client is knowledgeable on need and product/approach - move to next step
- client is not very clear on the need and / or approach is undefined - help client structure goals and propose an approach
What is included in a design problem statement
- client
-design goal
-technical specifications (charactersitics, parameters, features of the required solution)
-constraints (time, budget, space) - key assumptions
When gathering information, what kind of information do you gather and how?
What:
- client (production forecast)
- regulations (storage and handling of produced water)
- objectives (final target quality)
- inlet (input streams compostiion and flowrate)
- site details (proximity to utilities, stakeholders, climate, geography)
How:
- clients
- reading literature
- mathematical modeling
- experimental testing
- assumptions
- maps
- other sources
