Engineering Commons^™

Thermal Efficacy Of Green Walls In Building Structures In The Northeast United States, Nathaniel Wright

Student Showcase

Climate change is one of the most threatening issues that humankind faces in the 21st century and there is indisputable evidence that our planet is experiencing global temperature rise, shrinking of ice sheets and sea level rise, warming oceans, and extreme weather events at an alarming rate. Urbanization drives these changes and creates the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. One method to mitigate this issue is urban greening, specifically the construction of green walls which take advantage of unused vertical exteriors of buildings. Despite existing literature on green walls especially in Europe and Asia, green walls must be researched more …

Modeling Power Generation Losses Due To Environmental And Fish Passage Attraction Flows At A Run-Of-River Hydroelectric Operation In The Northeast, Elizabeth A. Lotter

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Environmental mitigation represents an important, recurring cost to the hydropower industry, the largest renewable power source in the United States. Environmental flows are one such expense whereby hydro operations maintain a minimum flow in the river to mitigate impacts on aquatic and riparian ecosystems. Any hydroelectric facility may have a habitat maintenance flow requirement, but facilities with assisted aquatic organism passage structures, or fishways, may be subject to additional flow requirements associated with specific species migrations. This study assesses the economic impact of meeting environmental flow requirements in terms of losses to power generation at a representative hydroelectric facility and …

Natural Organic Matter (Nom) Precursors Characterization In Source Water By Surrogate Measurements And Disinfection Byproducts (Dbps) Analysis, Mohammad (Kiron) Shakhawat

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Natural organic matter (NOM) is the main source of organic precursors for organic disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in treated drinking water.Aquatic NOM is a heterogeneous mixture consisting of both hydrophobic and hydrophilic compounds. The hydrophobic fraction includes humic substances, primarily humic acids and fulvic acids. In most waters, fulvic acid is considered to be the major portion of the hydrophobic fraction. Humic substances are formed by decaying vegetative matter, such as lignin. Lignin is found in plants and is quite resistant to biodegradation, yet it is reactive with oxidants, such as chlorine. Thus, water continuing higher amounts of aromatic hydrophobic humic …

Weatherization And Energy Security: A Review Of Recent Events In Ercot, Golbon Zakeri, Maria Hmaria Hernandez, Matthew Lackner, James Manwell

Publications

Purpose of Review

This review addresses the question of energy security. With the transition of energy generation fleet to cleaner, more sustainable electricity production, energy security is a topic of increasing importance.

Recent Findings

Recent events in Texas brought the concept of energy security to the fore. In this review, we examine the makeup of electricity generation and the causes of the February 2021 blackout of Texas. We will investigate the cost/benefit of winterization in Texas and ask why this was not undertaken subsequent to a similar event in 2011.

Summary

We investigate the case of Texas blackout of February …

Influence Of Foundation Damping On Offshore Wind Turbine Monopile Design Loads, Wystan Carswell, Sanjay R. Arwade, Jörgen Johansson, Don J. Degroot

Publications

The dynamic behavior of offshore wind turbines (OWTs) must be designed considering stochastic load amplitudes and frequencies from waves and mechanical loads associated with the spinning rotor during power production. The proximity of the OWT natural frequency to excitation frequencies combined with low damping necessitates a thorough analysis of sources of damping; of these sources of damping, least is known about the contributions of damping from soil-structure interaction (foundation damping). This paper studies the influence of foundation damping on cyclic load demand for monopile-supported OWTs considering the design situations of power production, emergency shutdown, and parked conditions. The NREL 5 …

A Moment In The Sun: Solar Nowcasting From Multispectral Satellite Data Using Self-Supervised Learning, Akansha Singh Bansal, Trapit Bansal, David Irwin

Publications

ABSTRACT

Solar energy is now the cheapest form of electricity in history. Unfortunately,

signi.cantly increasing the electric grid’s fraction of

solar energy remains challenging due to its variability, which makes

balancing electricity’s supply and demand more di.cult. While

thermal generators’ ramp rate—the maximum rate at which they

can change their energy generation—is .nite, solar energy’s ramp

rate is essentially in.nite. Thus, accurate near-term solar forecasting,

or nowcasting, is important to provide advance warnings to

adjust thermal generator output in response to variations in solar

generation to ensure a balanced supply and demand. To address the

problem, this paper develops a …

The Sustainability Of Decarbonizing The Grid: A Multi-Model Decision Analysis Applied To Mexico, Rodrigo Mercado Fernandez, Erin Baker

Publications

Mexico recognizes its vulnerability to the effects of climate change, including sea level rise, increasing average temperatures, more frequent extreme weather events and changes to the hydrological cycle. Because of these concerns Mexico has a vested interest in developing sustainable strategies for mitigating climate change as it develops its electricity grid. In this study, we use a set of sustainability criteria to evaluate a number of model-derived pathways for the electricity grid aimed at meeting Mexico's climate goals. We use a multi-step approach, combining pathways from multiple large scale global models with a detailed electricity model to leverage geographic information …

Large-Scale Electrochemical Degradation Of Poly-And Perfluoroalkyl Substances (Pfas) By Magnéli Ti4o7 Electrodes, Laura Siddon

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of synthetic chemicals that are extremely persistent in the environment. They classified as emerging contaminants and have been linked to impacts on the developmental, liver, immune, and thyroid systems, and are possible carcinogens. PFAS’ resistance to biodegradation and conventional oxidation processes make them one of the hardest chemicals to remove from water. With the discovery of PFAS in public water supplies, existing technologies are not capable of removing these recalcitrant contaminants to levels expected for the health of the public. Even in cases when conventional technologies can remove PFAS compounds, removal is …

Rain Rain Flush Away: Evaluating Rainwater Catchment First Flush Volumes, Bridgette Charlebois

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Rainwater harvesting systems often include quality control systems such as a diverted first flush volume to improve the collected water quality. The first flush volume has traditionally been defined as a set volume of rain based on the first 1-2 millimeters of rain that falls on a roof. Diverting a volume of water can be seen as a waste when rainwater is a main source of potable water, sometimes leading to lack of implementation, and thus contaminating the final collected water. Understanding the variability of first flush volume required due to environmental parameters can be used to develop an optimized …

Effect Of Intermittent Water Supply On Water Quality In A Model Pipeloop, Mariam Alkattan

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Intermittent water supply (IWS) is defined as a piped drinking water distribution system that operates for less than 24 hours per day. Water quality is found to be negatively impacted in IWS, which creates a human health risk. There are still may gaps in our understanding of pathways of contamination in IWS, which has been a limitation in creating appropriate solutions to maintain water quality in IWS systems. To characterize these pathways, we ran a study to investigate the impact of intermittency on water quality, biofilms, and water pressure in IWS, which consisted of constructing two identical model drinking water …

Using Remote Sensing And Environmental Precursors To Detect And Predict Cyanobacteria Harmful Algal Blooms In Northeastern Us Waterbodies, Amanda Craver

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Cyanobacteria harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) are a global problem with human health, environmental, and economic concerns. The severity and frequency of toxic cyanoHABs are expected to increase with climate change. Remote sensing has proven to be a useful tool in monitoring cyanoHABs. This study uses remote sensing observations from Sentinel-3Ocean Land Color Imager (OLCI)combined with the Spectral Shape Algorithm (SSA) to detect the presence of cyanobacteria in numerous waterbodies throughout the Northeast United States over 2016to 2020. The ACOLITE processor was used for the atmospheric correction of the Sentinel-3 OLCI data, as it has been shown to provide more accurate …

Drought Characteristics In The Lower Mekong River Basin And Relationship To Land Cover Change, Heejun Park

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Drought can have devastating effects on regional water resources and agriculture, with an estimated US$96 billions of damages globally between 2005 and 2015. In the Lower Mekong Basin, the impacts of drought have been a major concern for local stakeholders as the region is the largest rice-producing area in the world. Few studies of long-term drought in the region have directly assessed the effects of land cover changes on both agricultural and hydrological drought. We used a suite of remote sensing data to assess drought characteristics in five countries of this region (Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar) where traditional in-situ …

Control Effect Of Peracetic Acid On Chlorinated Dbp Formation And The Application Of Paa Pre-Oxidation In Drinking Water Treatment, Yue Sun

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Chlorine has been applied as the main disinfectant in US drinking water treatment for a century. Chlorination is low cost and effective, yet there are problems with this technology, including disagreeable taste of treated drinking water and formation of toxic and potentially carcinogenic disinfection byproducts (DBPs). Alternative disinfection methods including ozone, ferrate and UV light have been studied. They are not widely applied in drinking water treatment because of problems such as the costly generation process or no residual in the system.

Peracetic acid, an easy-to-use and economic friendly oxidant, has been applied as an alternative disinfectant to chlorine in …

Vpeak: Exploiting Volunteer Energy Resources For Flexible Peak Shaving, Phuthipong Bovornkeeratiroj, John Wamburu, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy

Publications

Traditionally, utility companies have employed demand response for large loads or deployed centralized energy storage to alleviate the effects of peak demand on the grid. The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) and the proliferation of networked energy devices have opened up new opportunities for coordinated control of smaller residential loads at large scales to achieve similar benefits. In this paper, we present VPeak, an approach that uses residential loads volunteered by their owners for coordinated control by a utility for grid optimizations. Since the use of volunteer resources comes with hard limits on how frequently they can be used …

Peaktk: An Open Source Toolkit For Peak Forecasting In Energy Systems, Phuthipong Bovornkeeratiroj, John Wamburu, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy

Publications

As the electric grid undergoes the transition to a carbon free future, many new techniques for optimizing the grid’s energy usage and carbon footprint are being designed. A common technique used by many approaches is to reduce the energy usage of the grid’s peak demand periods since doing so is beneficial for reducing the carbon usage of the grid. Consequently, the design of peak forecasting methods that predict when and how much peak demand will be seen is at the heart of many energy optimization approaches. In this paper, we present PeakTK, an open-source toolkit and reference datasets for peak …

Breaking Wave Hazard Estimation Model For The U.S. Atlantic Coast, Spencer T. Hallowell

Publications

As offshore wind development is in its infancy along the U.S. Atlantic Coast challenges arise due to the effects of strong storms such as hurricanes. Breaking waves on offshore structures induced by hurricanes are of particular concern to offshore structures due to high magnitude impulse loads caused by wave slamming. Prediction of breaking wave hazards is important in offshore design for load cases using long mean return periods of environmental conditions. A breaking wave hazard estimation model (BWHEM) is introduced that provides a means for assessing breaking hazard at long mean return periods over a large domain along the U.S. …

Transportation Sustainability, Eleni Christofa

Sustainability Education Resources

An overview of sustainable transportation planning practices and management strategies and policies; current transportation trends; environmental and energy policies; nonmotorized modes (mainly bicycles and pedestrians); public transportation; life-cycle assessment for transportation infrastructure; alternative fuel vehicles; vehicle emission estimation models; demand management strategies (including parking policies, pricing strategies).

In Vivo Evaluation Of Oxygenic Photogranules’ Photosynthetic Capacity By Pulse Amplitude Modulation And Phototrophic–Irradiance Curves, Joseph G. Gikonyo, Andrew Keyser, John Tobiason, Jeeyon Jeong, Chul Park

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publication Series

The commingled microbial moiety of oxygenic photogranules (OPGs) facilitates aeration-free wastewater treatment. Embedded in an extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) matrix, microbial producers and consumers of oxygen occupying granular niches exchange substrates among themselves and with the bulk fluid. An assessment of the OPG's phototrophic potential or functional capacity may require combining different photoactivity signals. The photosynthetic capacity was evaluated using photosynthetic oxygen evolution (POE) and chlorophyll fluorescence (rapid light curves, RLC) measurements using OPGs grown at different light intensities.. A maximum oxygen generating capacity for optimal OPGs and reactor conditions was determined to be 284.4 mgO(2) gVSS(-1) h(-1) The OPGs …

A Framework For Meeting Economic And Ecological Objectives In Hydropower Operations, Sarah L. Pfeifle

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Hydropower is a low carbon energy source that provides reliable power, but imposes large, artificial sub-daily changes in flow that negatively impact ecological systems. Hydropower management faces the challenge of meeting economic and ecological objectives, neither of which can be fully optimized because of their Pareto nature. This study introduces an operational framework, called seasonal flexibility, as tool that aims to meet both sets of objectives. Economic objectives are met by allowing releases to deviate from inflows to generate power when it is most valuable. Ecological objectives are met by dynamically managing environmental flows to mitigate downstream impacts. Flexibility is …

Analysis Of Road Salt Loading And Transport In The Wachusett Reservoir Watershed, Joshua Soper

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Chloride exports from the widespread application of road salt serve as a primary contribution to water body salinity in cold climate regions. The detrimental effects of road salt pollution on water quality include an apparent relationship between chloride and water corrosivity. This study utilizes regression based chloride load estimation to support mass balances and analyze transport flow-paths to the Wachusett Reservoir from its predominantly rural watershed. Results from hydrograph and load separation techniques show that average loading and discharge from baseflow contributed approximately 74% and 65% of the total loading and discharge, respectively. The baseflow dominated tributary chloride loading is …

Optimizing Household Water Decisions For Managing Intermittent Water Supply In Mexico City, Savannah Wunderlich

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Nearly 1 billion people around the world experience intermittent water supply (IWS), including about 70% of residents in the Mexico City area. Households with IWS often rely on multiple sources of water to meet their needs, including municipal piped water, trucked water, and rainwater. When calculating water costs and reliability of supply, models of these systems must account for household decision-making regarding the volume of water to use from each different source each day. Modeling these household decisions (or “control policies”) is challenging, especially when households use rainwater as a water source, due to the complexity of the input variables …

3d Printed Architected Materials For Improving Biofilm Carriers For Wastewater Treatment Applications, Bryan Ovelheiro

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Wastewater infrastructure in the United States has been in dire need of improvement for quite a while. It was estimated that wastewater treatment systems would need about $57.2 billion to maintain acceptable levels of treatment in the coming years (Christen, 2003). This is just for maintaining the treatment systems in place, without any room for improvement, and it only accounts for about 31.6% of the total waster infrastructure need in this area (Christen, 2003). In fact, without sufficient upgrades, water quality gains achieved through the passing of the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water acts could be lost (Christen, 2003). …

Complexities Of Attraction Water Systems: A Review & An Experiment Showcasing Their Effects, Marcia Rojas

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

The presence of dams has direct negative effects on populations of migrating fish and their riverine habitat as well as impacts on the ecosystem services they provide. Fishways, provide upstream and downstream passage that is safe and timely, comprising specifically of “physical structures, facilities, or devices necessary to maintain all life stages of such fish, and project operations and measures related to such structures, facilities, or devices which are necessary to ensure the effectiveness of such structures, facilities or devices for such fish” (National Energy Policy Act 1992). Fishways, sloped channels or elevators that connect the tailrace to the head …

The Success, Morphology, And Performance Of Oxygenic Photogranules Under Light-Induced Stress Conditions, Samuel Downes

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of Two Real Time Methods For Assessing Thm Precursor Concentrations, Griffin Moriarty

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Conventional drinking water treatment generally requires maintenance of a disinfectant residual, most commonly free or combined chlorine. Since the discovery of disinfection byproducts (DBPs), utilities have relied on a broad range of water quality parameters to help them achieve compliance with DBP regulations. Most notably, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and ultraviolet absorbance at 254 nm (UV254) have been used to assess DBP precursor levels in near-real time. These are often compared to actual system DBP concentrations or to results from laboratory DBP precursor tests resulting in a site-specific precursor-DBP model. The DOC or UV254 models are often inaccurate, requiring re-calibration, …

An Assessment Of Lead And Copper In School Drinking Water, Kaavya Raghavan Ram

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Metal contamination in drinking water, especially heavy metals such as lead, and corrosion issues, pose a threat to human health and have received increasing attention in recent years. This study reports on the results of ‘The Massachusetts Assistance Program for Lead in School Drinking Water’ and provides a better understanding of the dynamics of sampling protocols, premise plumbing and their influence on lead and copper concentrations. ‘The Massachusetts Assistance Program for Lead in School Drinking Water’ that was announced in April 2016, implemented tap-based water sampling for lead and copper at K-12 public schools and Early Education and Childcare centers …

Developing A Toolkit For Citizen Scientists' Evaluation Of Drinking Water Quality, Leighann D'Andrea

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

This project evaluated tools for citizen science by assessing the potential to monitor drinking water quality at home with commercially sold, or off the shelf, test kits. The first objective was to compare the results of off the shelf test kits with laboratory-obtained values as performed in a controlled environment by trained laboratory personnel. The second objective was to provide potential citizen scientists with a selection of test kits to determine if they could successfully use the kits. These two objectives contributed to the end goal of understanding whether test kits on the market existed that could be used by …

Modeling Nature-Based Solutions For Climate Resilience, Mason Saleeba

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Riparian wetlands can serve as nature-based infrastructure that slow the rapid movement of water during high flow events. As the recurrence of high flow events increases due to global climate change, an improved understanding of the potential of wetland landscapes to provide flood mitigation is needed. This research addresses both the impacts of climate change and land cover on extreme flow events in the Otter Creek watershed in Vermont. The upstream portion of the basin is modeled with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to investigate the impacts of climate change on extreme flow events. A Hydrologic Engineering Center's …

Seasonal Impacts Of Climate Change On Future Peak River Discharge In The U.S. Northeast, Christina Wu

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

This research uses projected changes in future precipitation to calculate the changes in the magnitude, frequency, and timing of streamflow, particularly peak annual flows, in the U.S. Northeast through 20 representative watersheds. Temperature and precipitation data on a 3-hourly time step from five climate projection from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) are downscaled and bias- corrected using the Spatial Downscaling and Bias Correction (SDBC) method. These data are used to force a regional hydrological model (WRF-Hydro) to estimate daily future streamflow. The changes in magnitude at various return intervals of peak flow events are determined through …

Formation Of Low-Molecular-Weight Dissolved Organic Nitrogen In Two-Stage And Four-Stage Pre-Denitrification Biological Nutrient Removal Processes, Siwei Chen

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

To alleviate the eutrophication caused by excessive loading of nutrients, the upgrading of conventional activated sludge (CAS) process to biological nutrients removal (BNR) process has been widely applied in USA. In this study, we found that the dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) release can be effectively controlled by this upgrading, but dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) especially LMW-DON, which now is regarded as another important N source for supporting growth of phytoplankton in coastal water, cannot be removed effectively by BNR systems, especially by four-stage BNR systems. Different pre-denitrification BNR processes have different LMW-DON production rates. A four-stage pre-denitrification BNR releases more …