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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Huron-To-Erie Water Quality Data Platform, Lanyu Xu, Carol J. Miller, James Olson, Michael Beaulac Jul 2018

Huron-To-Erie Water Quality Data Platform, Lanyu Xu, Carol J. Miller, James Olson, Michael Beaulac

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research Publications

To address the challenges of environmental degradation, creation of a sustainable urban environment, and increased public engagement and awareness, a mass-oriented, user-friendly and cloud-based data platform has been developed and deployed to provide integrative water quality data in one of the most critical urban corridors of the Laurentian Great Lakes system. In this paper, we describe the data platform developed for the watershed and connecting channels between Lake Huron and Lake Erie, including the St. Clair River, Lake St. Chair, and the Detroit River. This data platform greatly facilitates the access of data across data providers and agencies. Several example …


Pepso: Reducing Electricity Usage And Associated Pollution Emissions Of Water Pumps, Seyed Mohsen Sadatiyan Abkenar, Carol J. Miller Aug 2017

Pepso: Reducing Electricity Usage And Associated Pollution Emissions Of Water Pumps, Seyed Mohsen Sadatiyan Abkenar, Carol J. Miller

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research Publications

Using metaheuristic optimization methods has enabled researchers to reduce the electricity consumption cost of small water distribution systems (WDSs). However, dealing with complicated WDSs and reducing their environmental footprint remains a challenge. In this study a multi-objective version of Pollution Emission Pump Station Optimization tool (PEPSO) is introduced that can reduce the electricity cost and pollution emissions (associated with the energy consumption) of pumps of WDSs. PEPSO includes a user-friendly graphical interface and a customized version of the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm. A measure that is called “Undesirability Index” (UI) is defined to assist the search for a promising optimization …


Spatially Explicit Life Cycle Assessment: Opportunities And Challenges Of Wastewater-Based Algal Biofuels In The United States, Javad Roostaei, Yongli Zhang Aug 2016

Spatially Explicit Life Cycle Assessment: Opportunities And Challenges Of Wastewater-Based Algal Biofuels In The United States, Javad Roostaei, Yongli Zhang

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research Publications

This work presented a Spatially-Explicit-High-Resolution Life Cycle Assessment (SEHR-LCA) model for wastewater-based algal biofuel production, by integrating life cycle assessment, GIS analysis, and site-specific Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) data analysis. Wastewater resources, land availability, and meteorological variation were analyzed for algae cultivation. Three pathways, Microwave Pyrolysis, hydrothermal liquefaction, and lipid extraction were modeled for bio-oil conversion. This model enables the assessment of seasonal and site-specific variations in productivity and environmental impacts of wastewater-based algal bio-oil across the whole U.S. Model results indicate that wastewater-based algal bio-oil can provide an opportunity to increase national biofuel output. The potential production of algal …