ENCE 489T -- Solid and Hazardous Waste Engineering

Instructor: Eric A. Seagren
Office: EGR 1149
Office Phone: (301) 405-4828
Fax: (301) 405-2585
Email: eseagren@eng.umd.edu
Office hours: 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM and 1:45 PM - 3:15 PM, Tuesday and Thursday; 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM, Wednesday; or by appointment

• CHEM 133 Chemistry for Engineers
• CHEM 233 Organic Chemistry
• ENCE 315 Introduction to Environmental Engineering

1. To prepare students to work in the complex, inter-disciplinary fields of solid and hazardous waste engineering--Solid and hazardous waste engineering are multidisciplinary undertakings, requiring inputs from practitioners in many fields working in teams, including engineers, geohydrologists, microbiologists, and soil scientists. Therefore, the course will build upon previous training while developing an appreciation for other scientific and nontechnical disciplines.
2. To introduce students to the multi-media nature of solid and hazardous waste engineering--Practitioners in these fields must recognize and deal with interrelated water pollution, air pollution, solid waste, and groundwater issues that affect the environment and human health.
3. To provide students with sufficient skills and background in the art and science of solid and hazardous engineering to allow them to begin to think about how to approach solid and hazardous waste problems rather than providing simple "cookbook" solutions--Each hazardous waste management project provides a different set of circumstances. Therefore, one goal of the class is to provide sufficient exposure to fundamental engineering principles and current practices that the student will have the tools to confront various scenarios.

1. Define waste and hazardous waste and the major categories and sources of hazardous wastes.
2. Describe the regulations driving solid and hazardous waste engineering and their goals.
3. Apply the mass-balance concept and the chemical principles and pollutant characteristics required to solve solid and hazardous waste problems.
4. Discuss the sources and characteristics of solid wastes, the hierarchy of integrated solid waste management, and the functional elements of a solid waste management system.
5. Describe the key approaches used for solid waste management, specifically: recycling of postconsumer materials; physical transformations of solid waste; composting; and municipal solid waste combustion.
6. Discuss the fundamental concepts of landfill design and operation.
7. Describe what a site characterization is, the site characterization tools covered and their applications, and perform the relevant calculations.
8. Apply the key properties of soil relevant to contaminant transport.
9. Define the terminology of groundwater flow and contaminant transport, and apply DarcyÕs law for groundwater flow.
10. Discuss what risk is, the purposes of the 4-stage risk assessment process, and perform the required calculations.
11. Describe the basic principles of operation of each of the aqueous treatment technologies reviewed and perform the design calculations covered.
12. Describe the application of the pump-and-treat process, differentiate between the hazardous waste remedial technologies discussed based on the basic concepts and goals of each and perform the design calculations covered.

• American Society of Civil Engineers
• Water Environment Federation
• International Water Association

• USEPA
• Maryland Department of the Environment

• Homework #1: Index of Learning Styles (ILS) questionnaire

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