Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Env-644: Use Of New Models To Support Vapour Intrusion Mitigation Design, Ian Hers, Parisa Jourabchi, Eric Hood, Michael Z'Graggen

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Soil vapour intrusion of subsurface volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into indoor air of buildings is a significant potential concern at existing sites where chemical releases occur, or at new buildings at Brownfield sites with residual chemical impacts. While soil vapour intrusion mitigation systems are increasingly being implemented, there are limited published data on mitigation performance for VOCs particularly for industrial or commercial buildings or high density residential buildings with below ground parking garages. Data gaps include the effectiveness of passive and active venting systems and reduction in vapour intrusion that can be achieved relative to unmitigated buildings. Because of lack …

Env-645: Risk Assessment For Asbestos In Soil, Natasha Corrin, Sandra Carrelas

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

On behalf of the City of Sarnia (the City), Golder Associates Ltd. completed a risk assessment to evaluate potential risks to human health and ecological receptors associated with soil and groundwater contamination at a multi-use recreational municipal park located on the City’s harbour front. Soil and groundwater investigations completed at the site revealed elevated concentrations of a number of typical industrial contaminants (including metals, volatile organic compounds, petroleum hydrocarbons and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon) relative to generic regulatory standards. Options for the management/remediation of these impacts were complicated by the observed presence of asbestos in soil at the site and the …

Env-646: Successful Water Reuse – The First Step Toward Zld, Ed Greenwood, Bill Malyk

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

After years of record-breaking droughts many aquifers around the World are drying up. Climate change is making it increasingly difficult to support the World’s growing population. If water means life then water scarcity represents a significant challenge to growth for industry.

A Canadian-based food processor is rising to the challenge of water scarcity at one of its production facilities in Gujarat, India. Until 2013 the facility was able to draw all the water it needed from a well. However, droughts have reduced groundwater resources and the demand for the facility’s products has grown. The food processor approached Amec Foster Wheeler …

Env-647: Repurposing Existing Infrastructure For Enhanced Wet Weather Flow Treatment For Vauxhall Pcp, City Of London, Louis Tasfi, Geordie Gould

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

The Vauxhall Pollution Control Plant (PCP) is one of the first Ontario municipal wastewater treatment plants to have implemented a wet weather strategy that involves chemically enhanced primary treatment (CEPT) and chemically enhanced secondary clarification processes and repurposes existing infrastructure.

Wet weather events were a major concern for the City of London (City). Prior to plant upgrade, when major wet weather flows occurred plant overflow would discharge directly into the Thames River. The solution designed by Dillon Consulting Limited treats wet weather flows of nearly ten times the rated average day plant capacity. The average and peak flow treatment capacity …

Env-648: Design Optimization For Enhanced Pollutant Removal Efficiency Of Bioretention Cells, Soheil Gholamreza-Kashi, Thomas Tiveron, Darko Joksimovic

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Consulting engineers, conservation authorities, and municipalities are looking for methods of stormwater management control that not only restore pre-development hydrological cycles, but also offer the benefit of runoff quality treatment. As a result, Low Impact Development (LID) approaches, which are often applied at the source, have been gaining in popularity. The objective of this research is to develop guidance for the design of bioretention cells for runoff water quality treatment, evaluating bioretention cells’ ability to perform such treatment function through modelling. A number of different modelling tools have been developed to simulate the performance of bioretention cells. These models are …

Env-650: Two Case Studies: Delivery Of Decentralized Wastewater Solutions In Ontario And India, Gillian C. Dumencu, Yuxin Wang, Wilf G. Stefan

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

This paper presents two case studies for the delivery of wastewater servicing solutions: one in Ontario, Canada and the other in Gujarat State, India. In each case a decentralized small diameter gravity sewer wastewater collection and treatment system was implemented for servicing residential development—with some interesting differences and similarities. The first case is a small private mobile home park in Eastern Ontario under a Ministry of Environment Order to address failing on-site septic systems. The Municipality was obliged to take over operation of the on-site systems; however, there were not adequate funds available to rectify the failing systems. A group …

Env-651: Highly Effective Electro-Fenton Oxidation Treatment For Concentrated Brewery Wastewater, Sharmin Sultana, Md. Saifur Rahaman, Alexander Baltodano

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

The brewing industry typically produces 3-10 liters of wastewater per liter of beer produced which contains sugars, soluble starch, ethanol, and volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and is typically characterized by 2,000-20,000 mg/L COD, 200-3,000 mg/L total suspended solids (TSS), and 10-124 mg/L phosphorus. In this study, the high strength brewery wastewater was treated with a multi-plated (BDD/Graphite) electrolysis cell configuration with Fenton’s reagent in a galvanostatic mode of operation. A novel cell configuration with five electrode plates (BDD/Graphite), which provide a higher current/voltage ratio than the conventional three plate configuration, was used in this study to provide more surface for …

Env-652: Conventional Vs Low Impact Development Stormwater Management Case Studies, Imtiaz Shah, Ron Antuma

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Low Impact Development (LID) Stormwater Management (SWM) techniques is the appropriate approach to be applied to site developments in an attempt to mimic a site’s natural hydrologic cycle to store and treat stormwater runoff close to where it falls. In 2014, the UTRCA conducted a survey of member municipalities to gauge a familiarity with SWM LIDs to help UTRCA effectively target their efforts regarding SWM LID during a development and planning process at the Municipal level. Several issues were highlighted from the survey results, including the presence of institutional, technical, and physical barriers, as well as a general lack of …

Env-653: Production Of Biosurfactant By Rhodococcus Erythropolis Sp. Cultivated In A Novel Fish Waste Compost Extract Substrate, Khoshrooz Kazemi, Baiyu Zhang, Leonard M. Lye

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

Compost generated through fish waste composting could provide an effective source of nutrient-rich organic matter for microbial growth, leading to the production of valuable products such as biosurfactants. Existing biosurfactant production is a relative expensive process and raw materials contribute about 30% of the production cost. Utilizing waste streams such as fish waste compost (FWC) as a substrate is an economically viable alternative. In this study, biosurfactant was produced by Rhodococcus erythropolis sp. P6-4P, a strain isolated from the North Atlantic Ocean. Biosurfactant production with FWC extract was compared with other soluble and insoluble carbon and nitrogen sources using emulsification …

Env-654: Numerical Modelling Of Smouldering Combustion To Optimize Ex Situ Soil Treatment System Design, Rebecca L. Solinger, Jason I. Gerhard, Gavin P. Grant, Grant C. Scholes

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering

There is widespread soil contamination at thousands of cites in Canada resulting from the historical improper storage and disposal of industrial liquids (Story et al., 2014). Large financial resources are allocated to remediation efforts due to the human and environmental health risks associated with exposure to such contamination, with over $582 million CAN spent on remediation in 2014-15 by the Canadian government alone (Treasury Board of Canada, 2016). Our scientific understanding of site remediation has evolved greatly over the past decades and it is now widely accepted that remediation of the contaminant source zone is necessary to achieve a high …

Regrowth Of Chlorella Sorokiniana On Recycled Media With Replenished Nutrients, William H. Spence

Master's Theses

Growth media recycling during algae cultivation is necessary to increase the efficiency and reduce the cost of biofuel production from algae feedstocks. Without recycling media, the cost of algae based biofuel production would be prohibitively high and large scale algae based biofuel production would not be economically viable. The ratio of media recycled to media wasted assumed for algae farms is generally calculated to maintain salt concentrations below growth inhibitory levels, ignoring the influence of secondary metabolites which might decrease productivity. Secondary metabolites, which include allelopathic or auto-inhibitory biological contaminants, might lead to the accumulation of growth-inhibiting compounds in recycled …

Ncma Groundwater Model Using Usgs Modflow-2005/Pest, Brian Matthew Wallace

Master's Theses

A numerical model for the NCMA aquifer complex is presented. The objective of the study is to develop a numerical groundwater model for the NCMA aquifer system to enhance the understanding of subsurface groundwater flow. Infiltration, streamflow, pumping, and return flows are implemented to characterize the aquifer complex over time. The numerical model is calibrated to municipal and monitoring well data, average monthly water balances, and hydraulic contours. Transient aquifer inflows and outflows are assessed in the results of the study and are compared to balance terms from previous studies. The 2007 Todd Engineers Study subsurface inflows and outflows generate …

Water And Energy Use Of Antimicrobial Interventions In A Mid-Size Beef Packing Plant, Rami M. M. Ziara, Shaobin Li, Bruce I. Dvorak, Jeyamkondan Subbiah

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Data regarding the water and energy usage of current antimicrobial interventions in beef packing plants is scarce. The objective of this study was to collect representative water and energy usage data in a beef packing plant, with emphasis on antimicrobial interventions, to provide baseline data for comparison of new intervention technologies developed by researchers. Permanent and portable water flow meters were installed on the plant’s plumbing system to collect water flow data from March 2014 to March 2015. A local utility company was hired to meter electricity at the different subsystems using portable data loggers. The natural gas used in …

Efficiency Of Chlorophyll In Gross Primary Productivity: A Proof Of Concept And Application In Crops, Anatoly A. Gitelson, Yi Peng, Andrés Viña, Timothy J. Arkebauer, James S. Schepers

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

One of the main factors affecting vegetation productivity is absorbed light, which is largely governed by chlorophyll. In this paper, we introduce the concept of chlorophyll efficiency, representing the amount of gross primary production per unit of canopy chlorophyll content (Chl) and incident PAR. We analyzed chlorophyll efficiency in two contrasting crops (soybean and maize). Given that they have different photosynthetic pathways (C3 vs. C4), leaf structures (dicot vs. monocot) and canopy architectures (a heliotrophic leaf angle distribution vs. a spherical leaf angle distribution), they cover a large spectrum of biophysical conditions. Our results show that chlorophyll efficiency in primary …

Carbon Nanotubes Affect The Toxicity Of Cuo Nanoparticles To Denitrification In Marine Sediments By Altering Cellular Internalization Of Nanoparticle, Xiong Zheng, Yinglong Su, Yinguang Chen, Rui Wan, Mu Li, Haining Huang, Xu Li

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

Denitrification is an important pathway for nitrate transformation in marine sediments, and this process has been observed to be negatively affected by engineered nanomaterials. However, previous studies only focused on the potential effect of a certain type of nanomaterial on microbial denitrification. Here we show that the toxicity of CuO nanoparticles (NPs) to denitrification in marine sediments is highly affected by the presence of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). It was found that the removal efficiency of total NO_X⁻-N (NO₃⁻-N and NO₂⁻-N) in the presence of CuO NPs was only 62.3%, but it …

Bathymetric Survey For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo, Hispaniola, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian, Fred Moshary, Joseph Cleto, Yolanda Leon, Jorge Gonzalez, Daniel Comarazamy

Publications and Research

The two largest lakes on the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola, Lake Azuei in Haiti and Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic, have experienced dramatic growth and surface area expansion over the past few years leading to severe flooding and loss of arable land around the lake perimeters. In order to better understand the reasons for this unprecedented rate of expansion and the resulting consequences a multi-disciplinary team comprised of researchers from Haiti, the DR, and the US have embarked on an extensive data collecting and hydrologic and climatological modeling campaign. While the sensor deployment entails stations that measure climatological data …

Effectiveness Of Water Quality Benefits Provided By Stormwater Management Facilities/Infiltration Basin, Vinicius Rodrigues De Mattos Barreto

Theses

Stormwater Best Management Practices (BMP) and devices are systems frequently built under assumed design performances, but rarely verified after construction. Their effectiveness in protecting the environment against pollutants carried by stormwater runoff has been extensively questioned and investigated. This research presents a case study of an infiltration basin in Medford, NJ to verify if the 80% expected Total Suspended Solids (TSS) removal as stated in the New Jersey Stormwater BMP Manual is actually achieved. A sampling pit was installed on the site and infiltrated water samples were collected during three rain events and TSS measurements were compared with the inflow. …

Potential For Biofuel Production From Algae Based Wastewater Treatment In California: Can Algal Biofuels Be Cost-Competitive With Traditional Petroleum Based Diesel?, Amanda Rupiper

Master's Projects and Capstones

Neither the use of algae to clean wastewater, nor the use of photosynthetic organisms to generate biodiesel, are new concepts on their own. By combining these two processes, algal-based wastewater treatment with algal biofuel production, additional benefits can be derived, among which could be a cost-savings. In California the average estimated base production cost per gallon for algal biodiesel is $5.98/gallon. Compared to the adjusted production cost of petroleum-based diesel of $1.53/gallon, biodiesel is not cost-competitive. Coupling wastewater treatment and algal cultivation reduces the net energy use of the two processes separately and, if accounted for, greatly reduces the production …

Modeling, Simulation, And Analysis Of Lithium-Ion Batteries For Grid-Scale Applications, Matthew Thomas Lawder

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Lithium-ion batteries have become universally present in daily life, being used across a wide range of portable consumer electronics. These batteries are advantageous compared to other forms of energy storage due to their high energy density and long cycle life. These characteristics make lithium-ion batteries advantageous for many new and developing applications that require large scale energy storage such as electric vehicles and the utility grid. Typical uses for lithium-ion batteries require consistent cycling patterns that are predictable and easy to approximate across all uses, but new large scale applications will have much more dynamic demands. The cycling patterns for …

Environmental Fullerene Chemistry: Elucidating Critical Reaction Pathways And Resulting Products In The Aqueous Phase, Jiewei Wu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

As the production of fullerenes and fullerene-based materials approaches industrial scale, there are increasing interests/concerns regarding their (potential) environmental impact(s) upon release. To date, a number of critical, aqueous-based fullerene transformation pathways under environmentally relevant conditions remain poorly understood. Comprehensive, fundamental, and quantitative understanding of the potential (major) reaction pathways and resulting products of fullerene materials, particularly in aquatic systems, is now crucial for their accurate fate, transport, life cycle, risk assessment(s), and thus ultimate material sustainability.

Herein, this dissertation is focused on identifying and elucidating aqueous transformation pathways of fullerene materials, focused on C60 as a model fullerene, under …