Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

An Analytical Solution For Attainment Of Field Capacity, Ali Aldrees

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Field Capacity (FC) is a key parameter to quantify in agricultural engineering, irrigation controlling, and soil physics studies. For instance, irrigation studies focuses on determining the optimal amount of water needed by plants to grow following an irrigation system and therefore relies on determining FC. Likewise, the value of FC is a good indicator of soil textures, structures and pore size distributions. For example, loamy soils have a wider distribution of pores leading to high FC values. FC depends on multiple physically-grounded variables which include matric potential value (ψ_FC ), water content at FC (θ_FC ), specific drainage time to …

Recovery Of Nutrients From Anaerobically Digested Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal (Ebpr) Sludge Through Struvite Precipitation, Maraida Balaguer-Barbosa

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water resources in Florida have been severely degraded by eutrophic conditions, resulting toxic algae blooms, which negatively affect health and tourism. Eutrophication, or excessive amount of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) in water, overstimulates the production of aquatic plants, depletes dissolved oxygen, and deteriorates the aquatic environment. However, phosphorus is a non-renewable resource essential for all living organisms. In fact, more than half of the total demand for P globally is to supply the food industry, which has concerningly accelerated the depletion rates of phosphate reserves.

In many wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), the enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) approach has …

Validating The Accuracy Of Neatwork, A Rural Gravity Fed Water Distribution System Design Program, Using Field Data In The Comarca Ngöbe-Bugle, Panama, Maria Briones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the sustainable development goals to increase access to improved water there are still 884 million people in the world without access to an improved water source (WHO, 2017). One method to improve access to water in rural, mountainous areas, is through construction of gravity fed water distribution systems. These systems should be designed based upon fundamental principles of hydraulics. One method of doing so in a time efficient manner with minimal engineering knowledge is to utilize a downloadable computer program such as Neatwork, which aids in design of rural, gravity fed water distribution systems and has been used by …

Underground Stormwater Treatment Performance In Urban Coastal Catchments: Case Study Of Baffle Boxes In The City Of Tampa, Awet Eyob Tsegay

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In coastal urban regions, underground stormwater treatment units are suitable infrastructure options because they take less space where premium land is expensive. Even then, they should be accessible and ideally small enough to fit into existing stormwater networks. Since 2003, the City of Tampa and Florida’s Department of Transportation (FDOT) have installed 47 baffle boxes into the city’s stormwater pipe networks. Baffle boxes are underground stormwater treatment structures designed to capture sediments and floating debris. Since their deployment, many challenges regarding their practical sediment capturing performance was raised by the city.

The objective of this research was to evaluate the …

Dynamic Modeling Of An Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, Komal Rathore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Advanced wastewater treatment plants have complex biological kinetics, time variant influent rates and long processing times. The modeling and operation control of wastewater treatment plant gets complicated due to these characteristics. However, a robust operational system for a wastewater treatment plant is necessary to increase the efficiency of the plant, reduce energy cost and achieve environmental discharge limits. These discharge limits are set by the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) for municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants to limit the amount of nutrients being discharged into the aquatic systems.

This document summarizes the research to develop a supervisory operational …

Assessment Of Drinking Water Quality Management And A Treatment Feasibility Study For Brick By Brick Water Storage Tanks In Rakai Uganda, James V. Murduca

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reliable access to safe drinking water is one necessity for humans to live without concern for major health risks. The overall goal of this research is to improve the public health, through improved drinking water, for communities in the Rakai District in Uganda, directly, and other communities in the world, indirectly, via dissemination of knowledge. This study specifically assessed the knowledge of drinking water quality in regards to public health, their sanitation measures, and water treatment methods for users of Brick by Brick rainwater harvesting tanks in the Rakai District (N = 28) by using a knowledge, attitudes, and practice …

Assessing The Impacts Of Climate Change On Streamflow And Reservoir Operation In Central Florida, Toni Panaou

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is a global concern as it may affect many aspects of life, including water supply. A tool used to model climate change’s impacts is called a General Circulation Model (GCM). GCMs project future scenarios including temperature and precipitation, but these are designed at a coarse resolution and require downscaling for employment for regional hydrologic modeling. There is a vast amount of research on downscaling and bias-correcting GCMs data, but it is unknown whether these techniques alter precipitation signals embedded in these models or reproduce climate states that are viable for water resource planning and management. Using the Tampa, …