Water treatment is any process that improves the quality of water to make it appropriate for a specific end-use. The end use may be drinking, industrial water supply, irrigation, river flow maintenance, water recreation or many other uses, including being safely returned to the environment. Water treatment removes contaminants and undesirable components, or reduces their concentration so that the water becomes fit for its desired end-use. This treatment is crucial to human health and allows humans to benefit from both drinking and irrigation use.
John Todd is a Canadian biologist working in the general field of ecological design. He addresses problems of food production and wastewater processing by using ecosystems technologies that incorporate plants, animals and bacteria. Todd has developed "Arks" or "bioshelters", ecologically closed "life-support systems" with the goal of sustainable functioning. He combines alternative technologies for renewable energy, organic farming, aquaculture, hydroponics and architecture to create "living machines" or "eco-machines".
Water reclamation is the process of converting municipal wastewater (sewage) or industrial wastewater into water that can be reused for a variety of purposes. Types of reuse include: urban reuse, agricultural reuse (irrigation), environmental reuse, industrial reuse, planned potable reuse, and de facto wastewater reuse. For example, reuse may include irrigation of gardens and agricultural fields or replenishing surface water and groundwater. Reused water may also be directed toward fulfilling certain needs in residences, businesses, and industry, and could even be treated to reach drinking water standards. The injection of reclaimed water into the water supply distribution system is known as direct potable reuse. However, drinking reclaimed water is not a typical practice. Treated municipal wastewater reuse for irrigation is a long-established practice, especially in arid countries. Reusing wastewater as part of sustainable water management allows water to remain as an alternative water source for human activities. This can reduce scarcity and alleviate pressures on groundwater and other natural water bodies.
Milorganite is a brand of biosolids fertilizer produced by treating sewage sludge by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. The term is a portmanteau of the term Milwaukee Organic Nitrogen. The sewer system of the District collects municipal wastewater from the Milwaukee metropolitan area. After settling, wastewater is treated with microbes to break down organic matter at the Jones Island Water Reclamation Facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The byproduct sewage sludge is produced. This is heat-dried with hot air in the range of 900–1,200 °F (482–649 °C), which heats the sewage sludge to at least 176 °F (80 °C) to kill pathogens. The material is then pelletized and marketed throughout the United States under the name Milorganite. The result is recycling of the nitrogen and phosphorus from the waste-stream as fertilizer. The treated wastewater is discharged to Lake Michigan.
Distillers grains are a cereal byproduct of the distillation process. Brewer's spent grain usually refers to barley produced as a byproduct of brewing, while distillers grains are a mix of corn, rice and other grains.
The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD), originally known as the Sanitary District of Chicago, is a special-purpose district chartered to operate in Cook County, Illinois since 1889. Although its name may imply otherwise, it is not a part of the City of Chicago's local government but is created by Illinois state government with an elected Board of Commissioners. The MWRD's main purposes are the reclamation and treatment of wastewater and flood water abatement in Cook County to protect the health and safety of citizens and of area waterways. In 1900, the District notably reversed the flow of the Chicago River, and it is currently involved in the large multi-decade construction of the "Deep Tunnel," Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP).
Paul V. Roberts was a prominent environmental engineer. He made major contributions to environmental engineering by applying fundamental principles of mass transport and chemistry to drinking water treatment and wastewater reclamation research. An author of more than 200 scientific publications, he was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Swiss Academy of Sciences.
Sanitary engineering, also known as public health engineering or wastewater engineering, is the application of engineering methods to improve sanitation of human communities, primarily by providing the removal and disposal of human waste, and in addition to the supply of safe potable water. Traditionally a branch of civil engineering and now a subset of environmental engineering, in the mid-19th century, the discipline concentrated on the reduction of disease, then thought to be caused by miasma. This was accomplished mainly by the collection and segregation of sewerage flow in London specifically, and Great Britain generally. These and later regulatory improvements were reported in the United States as early as 1865.
Menachem Elimelech is the Sterling Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University. Elimelech is the only professor from an engineering department at Yale to be awarded the Sterling professorship since its establishment in 1920. Elimelech moved from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to Yale University in 1998 and founded Yale's Environmental Engineering program.
The biological treatment of wastewater in the sewage treatment plant is often accomplished using conventional activated sludge systems. These systems generally require large surface areas for treatment and biomass separation units due to the generally poor settling properties of the sludge. Aerobic granules are a type of sludge that can self-immobilize flocs and microorganisms into spherical and strong compact structures. The advantages of aerobic granular sludge are excellent settleability, high biomass retention, simultaneous nutrient removal and tolerance to toxicity. Recent studies show that aerobic granular sludge treatment could be a potentially good method to treat high strength wastewaters with nutrients, toxic substances.
The Eni Award is a prize awarded by the Italian oil and gas company Eni with the aim of encouraging better use of energy sources and increased environmental research. The strict award guidelines and the notable names on the selection committee make Eni a coveted award. List of Eni award winners include Nobel laureates like Harold W. Kroto and Alan Heeger.
Bioresource engineering is similar to biological engineering, except that it is based on biological and/or agricultural feedstocks. Bioresource engineering is more general and encompasses a wider range of technologies and various elements such as biomass, biological waste treatment, bioenergy, biotransformations, bioresource systems analysis, bioremediation and technologies associated with Thermochemical conversion technologies such as combustion, pyrolysis, gasification, catalysis, etc.
Mark van Loosdrecht is a Dutch professor in environmental biotechnology at Delft University of Technology. He was the creator of Nereda, a wastewater treatment technology developed by a cooperation between the Delft University of Technology, the Dutch Foundation for Applied Water Research (STOWA) and Royal HaskoningDHV.
Kartik Chandran is an American environmental engineer at Columbia University, where he is a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. He primarily works on the interface between environmental molecular and microbiology, environmental biotechnology and environmental engineering. The focus of his research is on elucidating the molecular microbial ecology and metabolic pathways of the microbial nitrogen cycle. Applications of his work have ranged from energy and resource efficient treatment of nitrogen containing wastewater streams, development and implementation of sustainable approaches to sanitation to novel models for resource recovery. Under his stewardship, the directions of biological wastewater treatment and biological nutrient removal were established for the first ever time in the history of Columbia University.
Lois Hattery Tiffany (1924–2009) was a mycologist who taught for over 50 years at Iowa State University (ISU) and was known as "Iowa's mushroom lady". She won a number of awards, including becoming the first recipient of both the Mycological Society of America's Weston Award and the Iowa Governor’s Medal for Science Teaching. She published on many different aspects of fungal life, but her special area of research was Iowa's prairie fungi.
Hallvard Ødegaard is a Norwegian professor emeritus from Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is known as the inventor of the Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor for wastewater treatment.
William Joseph Oswald was an American educator, scientist, and engineer who spent his entire academic career at the University of California, Berkeley in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Public Health. He made foundational contributions to the fields of wastewater treatment and applied phycology, or as he called it, "algology". Throughout a career spanning more than five decades, Oswald was the primary academic advisor to more than two dozen doctoral students, sat on more than 100 additional masters and doctoral thesis committees, and taught seminal courses in applied algology.
Takashi Asano is a Japanese-born environmental engineer and a professor emeritus at the University of California, Asano has more than 40 years of academic and professional experience in environmental and water resources engineering, specializing in water reclamation, recycling, and reuse. During 1978–1992, he served as the water reclamation specialist for the California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) in Sacramento, during the formative years of water reclamation, recycling, and reuse. Asano has conducted water reclamation and reuse studies at the SWRCB and the University of California at Davis, many of which contributed to the scientific and technical basis for State of California's Title 22 regulations. Previously, Asano taught at Montana State University, Bozeman, 1971–75, and Washington State University, Pullman, 1975–78. He has continued to lecture widely and publish on topics current and ancient.
Richard O. Mines Jr. is an American civil/environmental engineer, academic, and author. He is an emeritus professor of environmental and civil engineering at Mercer University. His research is primarily focused on the activated sludge process and biological nutrient removal processes, with particular emphasis on environmental engineering, water treatment, biosolids treatment, and engineering education.
