Water Treatment Engineering

1 Course Unit

Globally, 2 billion people lack access to clean, safe water that is vital for drinking, sanitation, and agriculture. Climate change coupled with contamination of existing water supplies have exacerbated water scarcity, making technologies to remediate, reuse, and desalinate water more critical than ever. This course will cover the fundamental principles of water treatment engineering and examine how it can be applied to ensure access to safe and clean water, mitigate waterborne diseases, protect the environment, and support sustainable development. Water treatment engineering is the application of scientific and engineering principles to design, develop, and implement processes and technologies to purify and manage water resources for specific quality and safety standards. We will explore a wide range of water engineering technologies used in drinking water treatment, wastewater remediation, resource recovery, and desalination. Fundamental principles and advanced concepts governing water treatment systems will be introduced with a particular focus on the application of fundamental engineering sciences including thermodynamics, mass transport, and fluid dynamics to examine the efficiency of treatment and utilization of energy/emissions required for treatment. In addition to the engineering and scientific aspects of water treatment, this course will also place emphasis on the important humanitarian and economic aspects of water engineering and discuss global issues on water quality, scarcity, and environmental justice. Course content includes: (1) an overview of water engineering and its significance in environmental, societal, industrial, and municipal contexts, (2) a review of key concepts from fluid mechanics, mass transfer, and thermodynamics, (3) a brief introduction to water chemistry and contaminants of importance for human health and ecosystem protection, (4) the key physio-chemical and thermodynamic principles underlying all water treatment processes, (5) analysis of specific unit operations used in municipal water treatment, wastewater treatment, and desalination including membrane processes; and (6) an overview of advanced treatment operations for specific industrial and emerging applications. Also Offered As: MEAM 5620 1 Course Unit