Publications related to Environmental engineering

Selection of informative monitoring techniques for bridge-performance evaluations

Decisions regarding the management of civil infrastructure are becoming more crucial as a large share of bridges is presently approaching what is often considered to be the end of their theoretical service duration. Evaluating existing structures using a d ...

Trinity College2023

Metabolic, cellular and defense responses to single and co-exposure to carbamazepine and methylmercury in Dreissena polymorpha

Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider, Dominique Grandjean

Carbamazepine (CBZ) and Hg are widespread and persistent micropollutants in aquatic environments. Both pollutants are known to trigger similar toxicity mechanisms, e.g. reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Here, their effects were assessed in the zebr ...

2022

Tree root distribution modelling in different environmental conditions

David Andrew Barry, Paolo Perona, Massimiliano Schwarz

The ability to predict the spatial distribution of tree root system variables (e.g., the Root system Area (RA), the maximum root diameter, the number of roots in diameter classes, the density of fine roots, etc.) under different environmental conditions is ...

2022

A Champion for Chemistry: Elements of Jim Morgan's Intellectual Legacy

Janet Gordon Hering

James (Jim) Morgan was a leading figure in the field of environmental science and engineering. He championed the application of chemistry in the study of the environment and the design and optimization of environmental treatment processes. Jim influenced t ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2021

Biochar and environmental sustainability: Emerging trends and techno-economic perspectives

Edgard Gnansounou

Environmental pollutants including emerging contaminants are a growing concern worldwide. Organic wastes, such as food waste, compost, animal manure, crop residues, and sludge are generally used as feedstock. The conventional treatment methodologies (prima ...

Elsevier2021

Combining Fluidic Devices with Microscopy and Flow Cytometry to Study Microbial Transport in Porous Media Across Spatial Scales

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, David Scheidweiler

Understanding the transport, dispersion and deposition of microorganisms in porous media is a complex scientific task comprising topics as diverse as hydrodynamics, ecology and environmental engineering. Modeling bacterial transport in porous environments ...

2020

Effect of Aging on the Stability of Microbially Reduced Uranium in Natural Sediment

Rizlan Bernier-Latmani, Barbora Bártová, Yuheng Wang, Luca Loreggian, Sophie Louise Bretagne, Agnès Novotny

Reductive immobilization of uranium has been explored as a remediation strategy for the U-contaminated subsurface. Via the in situ biostimulation of microbial processes, hexavalent U is reduced to less soluble tetravalent species, which are immobilized wit ...

2019

Accurate and efficient interpretation of load-test data for asset-management

Sai Ganesh Sarvotham Pai

Increasing demand for new infrastructure and ageing of existing infrastructure has made management of infrastructure a key challenge of this century. Replacement of all ageing civil infrastructure is economically and environmentally unsustainable. Civil in ...

EPFL2019

A Tale of Two Treatments: The Multiple Barrier Approach to Removing Chemical Contaminants During Potable Water Reuse

Urs von Gunten

In response to water scarcity and an increased recognition of the risks associated with the presence of chemical contaminants, environmental engineers have developed advanced water treatment systems that are capable of converting municipal wastewater efflu ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2019

Relationship Between Inactivation and Genome Damage of Human Enteroviruses Upon Treatment by UV254, Free Chlorine, and Ozone

Tamar Kohn, Virginie Bachmann, Suzanne Marie Young, Jason Robert Torrey

Quantitative PCR (qPCR) is a convenient tool for monitoring virus concentrations in water and wastewater treatment trains, though it only informs about virus presence, but not infectivity. This limitation can be overcome if the relationship between infecti ...

2019

Hydrological and hydraulic solutions for the sustainability of habitat life in human altered streams

Amin Niayifar

In this thesis, I aim to contribute to the research towards improving the sustainability of habitat life in streams affected by anthropogenic activities. With the growing trend of altering natural water regimes due to hydropower operations, irrigation, and ...

EPFL2019

Proxies to monitor the inactivation of viruses by ozone in surface water and wastewater effluent

Urs von Gunten, Tamar Kohn, Camille Wolf, Annalisa Pavese

Ozone treatment is an effective barrier against viral pathogens, therefore it is an integral part of many water and wastewater treatment trains. However, the efficacy of ozone treatment remains difficult to monitor, due to the lack of methods to track viru ...

2019

Design and Performance Evaluation of an Infotaxis-Based Three-Dimensional Algorithm for Odor Source Localization

Alcherio Martinoli, Ali Marjovi, Faezeh Rahbar, Julian Ruddick

In this paper we tackle the problem of finding the source of a gaseous leak with a robot in a three-dimensional (3-D) physical space. The proposed method extends the operational range of the probabilistic Infotaxis algorithm [1] into 3-D and makes multiple ...

IEEE2018

Reinforcing Civil Engineering Curricula With Courses Including Project-Based Software Applications

Gerard Guell Bartrina

Civil engineering (CE) is one of the broadest engineering fields, if not the most, and requires undergraduate students to be exposed to a variety of topics; each can be easily recognized as a major in its own. Establishing a successful curriculum is a majo ...

IATED-INT ASSOC TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION & DEVELOPMENT2018

Pepper mild mottle virus as a water quality indicator

Jason Robert Torrey

Pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV) was recently found to be the most abundant RNA virus in human feces, and is a plant virus belonging to the genus Tobamovirus in the family Virgoviridae. When in human feces, it is of dietary origin from peppers and their pr ...

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP2018

Sunlight-mediated inactivation of health-relevant microorganisms in water: A review of mechanisms and modeling approaches

Tamar Kohn, Yang Liu, Krista Rule Wigginton

Health-relevant microorganisms present in natural surface waters and engineered treatment systems that are exposed to sunlight can be inactivated by a complex set of interacting mechanisms. The net impact of sunlight depends on the solar spectral irradianc ...

2018

Evaluation of a full-scale wastewater treatment plant upgraded with ozonation and biological post-treatments: Abatement of micropollutants, formation of transformation products and oxidation by-products

Urs von Gunten, Hansruedi Siegrist

To protect the ecosystem and drinking water resources in Switzerland and in the countries of the downstream catchments, a new Swiss water protection act entered into force in 2016 aiming to reduce the discharge of micropollutants from wastewater treatment ...

2018

Non-target screening to trace ozonation transformation products in a wastewater treatment train including different post-treatments

Urs von Gunten, Juliane Hollender

Ozonation and subsequent post-treatments are increasingly implemented in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) for enhanced micropollutant abatement. While this technology is effective, micro pollutant oxidation leads to the formation of ozonation transforma ...

2018

European demonstration program on the effect-based and chemical identification and monitoring of organic pollutants in European surface waters

Kristin Schirmer, Juliane Hollender, Anita Orsolya Hidasi, Kevin Thomas, Melis Muz

Growing concern about the adverse environmental and human health effects of a wide range of micropollutants requires the development of novel tools and approaches to enable holistic monitoring of their occurrence, fate and effects in the aquatic environmen ...

Elsevier Science Bv2017

Modeling Hydraulic Transport and Anaerobic Uptake by PAOs and GAOs During Wastewater Feeding in EBPR Granular Sludge Reactors

Christof Holliger, David Gregory Weissbrodt

New-generation bioprocesses using granular sludge aim for a high-rate removal of nutrients from wastewater with low footprint. Achieving enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) relies on the design of sludge beds and wastewater feeding conditions to ...

Wiley-Blackwell2017