Engineering Commons^™

Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical Analysis Of Evaporation From Unsaturated Soils, Seyed Morteza Mousavi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

ABSTRACT

Estimating evaporation from unsaturated soil is important for many applications including agriculture, climate, hydrology, water resources, saturated and unsaturated groundwater flow, slope stability, and soil covers. As an example, the long term performance of soil covers, which are widely used in mining and landfill applications to protect the environment, strongly depends on evaporation from their surfaces.

Evaporation depends on both moisture flow within an unsaturated soil mass, which is generally coupled with heat flow, and void ratio and hydraulic and air conductivities, which are in turn affected by stress and strain and resulting soil settlement. This makes thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) …

Purdue Airsense: An Affordable Way To Measure And Study Air Pollution, Stephane Junior Nouafo Wanko, Shadi Tariq Azouz, Ruihang Du, Brandon Boor, Greg Michalski

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Air pollution is a major health hazard worldwide, accounting for one-eighth of all deaths in 2012 (World Health Organization). Globally, there is a severe lack of ground-based spatiotemporal monitoring of gaseous and particulate air pollutants, particularly in Africa, South and Central America, and the Middle East. This is in great part due to the high costs of air quality instrumentation that meet accuracy and reliability criteria set by monitoring agencies. The air quality data that is available is often not presented to the public in a user-friendly manner. Taking advantage of recent developments in low-cost sensing technologies, an integrated sensor …

The Stability Of Uranium-Bearing Precipitates Created As A Result Of Ammonia Gas Injections In The Hanford Site Vadose Zone, Alberto Javier Abarca Betancourt

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Uranium (U) is a crucial contaminant in the Hanford Site. Remediation techniques to prevent contaminant migration of U located in the soils to other important water resources such as the Columbia River are of paramount importance. Given the location of the contaminant in the deep vadose zone, sequestration of U caused by ammonia (NH₃) gas injections appears to be a feasible method to decrease U mobility in the contaminated subsurface via pH manipulation, ultimately converting aqueous U mobile phases to lower solubility precipitates that are stable in the natural environment. This study evaluated the stability of those U-bearing …

Robust Drought Planning In Megacities: A Case Study In São Paulo, Brazil, Grace Cambareri

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

The megacity of São Paulo, Brazil recently faced a severe three-year drought (2013- 2015) that highlighted the challenges of growing water demands, unpredictability of future supply, and proper communication with the public during crisis. Given the poor outcomes of the recent drought, the question remains as to how the drought can be used to inform and improve future drought preparedness. This study develops a seven-step framework using simulation and a computational search to identify promising drought plans based on the historic record. These promising plans are then tested under alternative states of the world to explore their robustness and identify …

Pilot Reactor Operation Of The Oxygenic Photogranule (Opg) Wastewater Treatment Process, Adam Matthew Mcnair

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Treating wastewater is imperative for maintaining public health and sanitation as well as the natural environment. In the United States and developed countries around the globe, the activated sludge (AS) process has been paramount in effectively treating wastewater for over a century. However, high energy consumption due to required mechanical aeration of AS limits its potential as a sustainable process. The oxygenic photogranule (OPG) wastewater treatment process utilizes the photosynthetic ability of OPGs made possible by the symbiosis between heterotrophic AS and filamentous cyanobacteria and algae in dense, spherical biogranules. This research presents pilot operation of the OPG wastewater treatment …

A Comparison Of Smart City Indicators For Three Top Ten Us Cities, Rasoul Adnan Abbas

Civil Engineering Theses

The world population has been increasing each year, and the immigration from rural to urban cities has increased as well. The United Nations has estimated that more than 66% of people worldwide live in urban area, and this urbanization trend will continue to increase, thereby generating challenges to the cities as they strive to provide health care, schools, and transportation. The urban population explosion has also caused problems to the environment and overall urban economy as the need for more housing, jobs, and community services require smart solutions. The term, smart city, has many definitions, but all of them agree …