Faculty of Engineering

Civil & Environmental

Engineering Department
Environmental
Engineering
(354)
Prof. HAMDY SEIF
2018-2019
 ‫‪Professor Dr. Hamdy Seif‬‬
‫هندسة علوم البيئه والهندسه الصحيه‬
‫‪Environmental Science and Sanitary Engineering‬‬
‫استشارى اعمال االمداد بالمياه (محطات معالجة المياه ونظم تحلية مياه البحر وشبكات التوزيع)‬
‫‪Consultant of water supply systems‬‬
‫استشارى اعمال الصرف الصحى (محطات معالجة مياه الصرف وشبكات التجميع)‬
‫‪Consultant of wastewater works‬‬
‫قسم الهندسه المدنيه ‪ Civil Engineering Department‬غيرته منظمة اليونسكو عام ‪ 1995‬فى‬
‫معظم كليات الهندسه فى جامعات العالم ليشمل علوم الهندسه البيئيه لمكافحة التلوث بالعالم‬
‫وتم التغير مع بداية عام ‪ 2000‬الى‪:‬‬
‫‪Civil and Environmental Engineering Department‬‬
‫وبعد ذلك تم عمل قسم منفصل ‪Environmental Engineering Department‬‬
‫يحصل منه الطالب على بكالوريس هندسة العلوم البيئيه‬
‫باالضافه الى عمل منح كامله ‪ Full scolarships‬لدراسة الماجستير والدكتوراه فى هندسة العلوم البيئيه‬
 Course Contents

- Principles of Environmental Engineering

- Surface Water
- Groundwater
- Wastewater
- Solid waste and Landfill of Solid Waste

Textbooks: in the library

- Introduction to Environmental Engineering. M.L.Davis and
D.A.Cornwell, McGrawHill 2008.
- Introduction to Environmental Engineering. G.M.Masters and
W.P.Ela, PrenticHall 2008.
Objectives:
- To introduce students to fundamental principles of
Environmental Engineering.
- To gain familiarity with pollution control and treatment
systems.
- By the conclusion of the class, students will understand
basic environmental processes. They will also be
conversant in current environmental issues such as:
- Surface Water Treatment
- Groundwater protection
- Wastewater Treatment
- Solid Waste management and Landfill of solid waste
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this class;
f,h= Students will have a knowledge about Environmental
Engineering.
h = Students will have an introductory knowledge of process design of
water treatment.
f = Students will have an introductory knowledge of Ground water.
h = Students will have an introductory knowledge of process design of
wastewater treatment.
h = Students will have an introductory knowledge of landfills.
I, j = Students will gain knowledge of contemporary environmental
issues.
Water Quality Control
INTRODUCTION
• One of the first things that world travelers worry
about is whether it is safe to drink the water and
whether uncooked foods washed in local water are
safe to eat. The unfortunate answer in most places is
Noooo.
• For over 2 billion people in the developing countries
of the world, access to safe drinking water is simply
not possible today. The rest of us usually assume
(correctly, in most circumstances) that water coming
out the tap is clean and safe.
• That important luxury is the result of the
coordinated efforts of scientists, engineers, water
plant operators, and regulatory officials.
• Our traditional confidence in the quality of
drinking water in the United States, however, has
been shaken of late.
• In 1993, 400,000 people in Milwaukee became
ill, and more than 100 died, from an intestinal
parasite, Cryptosporidium, in their drinking
water.
• In the same year, residents of Manhattan and
others in the Washington, D.C. area were told
to boil their water when surprising numbers of
E. coli bacteria began to show up in their
drinking water, despite heavy doses of
chlorination.
• (This happened in USA, what about US)
Disinfection of Drinking Water:
Compounding the chlorination problem has
been the realization that byproducts of the
disinfection process, called trihalomethanes,
may be causing on the order of 10,000
cancer cases per year in the United States.
Drinking water disinfection as one of its six
highest-priority research topics in its 1996
Strategic Plan (U.S. EPA, 1996).
 MUNICIPAL WATER AND WASTEWATER SYSTEMS
• There are two critical systems that combine to break the
carrier-feces-water-victim sequence responsible for the spread
of waterborne diseases.
• The first is the water collection, treatment, and distribution
system that provides safe drinking water.
• The second is the wastewater collection and treatment system
that removes contaminants before the effluents are released
back into the local stream, lake, estuary, or coastal waters.
• The primary responsibility of these two systems is to kill
pathogens before and after water is used.
• Wastewater treatment systems also reduce BOD and nutrient
loading on the receiving water, and some remove toxic
chemicals.
• The Clean Water Act (CWA) governs the regulation of
wastewater effluents and water quality in the receiving body
of water.
• As shown in the following Figure municipal
systems may get their water from a local stream,
reservoir, or groundwater system.
• Larger cities tend to rely heavily on surface water
supplies, while small community water systems
more often take advantage of groundwater.
• In the United States, about half of the drinking
water comes from surface water supplies and the
other half from groundwater
• (and recently sea water)
• Water treatment plants filter and disinfect the
water before distributing it to customers.
• After water is used in households and businesses, it
is collected in a sanitary sewer system and sent to
the local wastewater treatment facility.
• Industrial wastewater may be treated and released
directly into the receiving body of water, or it may
use the municipal sanitary sewer system.
• In the latter case, the industrial effluent often must
receive some pretreatment before it can be disposed
of in the sanitary sewer system.
• Discharges of any wastewater permit requires the
discharger to meet certain technology-based
effluent limits and perform effluent monitoring.
• Also shown in Figure 6.1 is a storm sewer system that collects
runoff from urban streets. In older cities, the storm water
sewer lines join the sanitary system and the combination of
wastewaters flows to the municipal wastewater treatment
plant.
• There are an estimated 1100 of these combined sewer systems
in use today in the United States, serving some 43 million
people. These combined systems are unsatisfactory when it
rains since they often end up carrying more wastewater than
the local treatment system can handle. When that happens a
portion of the flow, which includes raw sewage, must be
diverted around the treatment plant and released directly into
the receiving water.
• The result is contaminated shorelines that must be posted with
warnings after almost every storm. Separating these combined
systems is immensely expensive. The preferred approach has
been to create massive reservoirs, usually underground, that
store the combined flow until the storm passes, after which
time the reservoir is slowly drained back into the sanitary
sewer system.
• In newer cities, and in newer sections of old
cities, the storm water collection system is
completely separated from the sanitary
sewer system to avoid the problem of
overloading. Separated systems are not without
their own problems, however. Runoff from
streets during both wet and dry periods is
passed untreated into the local receiving water.
• Chemical Standards
• Contaminants are established classified as:
• Inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals.
• Inorganic chemicals include highly toxic metals,
such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury;
nitrites (N02) and nitrates (N03), which can cause
methemoglobinemia ("blue-baby syndrome");
fluoride, which is purposely added to water to help
prevent dental caries but which can cause mottling
of teeth if the exposure is excessive (the standard is
temperature dependent); and asbestos fibers, which
are especially dangerous when inhaled, although
their danger is less certain for ingestion.
Organic chemical contaminants
have been classified using the following three groupings:
• Synthetic organic chemicals (SOCs) are compounds used
in the manufacture of a wide variety of agricultural and
industrial products. They include primarily insecticides and
herbicides.
• Volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) are synthetic chemicals
that readily vaporize at room temperature. These include
degreasing agents, paint thinners, glues, dyes, and some
pesticides. Representative chemicals include benzene,
carbon tetrachloride, 1,1,1-trichloroethane (TCA),
trichlorethylene (TCE), and vinyl chloride.
• Trihalomethanes (THMs) are the byproducts of water
chlorination. They include chloroform ( CHC13),
bromodichloromethane ( CHBrC12), dibromochloromethane
(CHBr2Cl), and bromoform (CHBr3).
 Microbiological Standards
• In this test, coliform bacteria (typically Escherichia
coli) are used as indicator organisms whose presence
suggests that the water is contaminated. Since the
number of coliform bacteria excreted in feces is on the
order of 50 million per gram and the concentration of
coliforms in untreated domestic wastewater is usually
several million per 100 mL, it would be highly unlikely
that water contaminated with human wastes would have
no coliforms.
• That conclusion is the basis for the drinking-water
standard for microbiological contaminants, which
specifies that for large water systems (serving more than
1000 people), no more than 5 percent of the test
samples can show any coliforms; for smaller systems
testing fewer than 40 samples per month, no more than
one sample can be test positive.
• The coliform test is also used to assess the safety of
water-contact recreational activities, with many states
recommending a limit of 1000 coliforms per 100 mL.
• However, proper interpretation of a coliform test made
on surface water is complicated by the fact that fecal
coliforms are discharged by animals as well as humans.
• Thus a high fecal coliform count is not necessarily an
indication of human contamination. When it is
important to distinguish between human and animal
contamination, more sophisticated testing can be
performed.
• Such testing is based on the fact that the ratio of fecal
coliform to fecal streptococci is different in human and
animal discharges.
Water treatment
SURFACE WATER
TREATMENT
WATER TREATMENT SYSTEMS
• The purpose of water treatment systems is to bring raw water
up to drinking-water quality. The particular type of treatment
equipment required to meet these standards will depend to
some extent on the source of water.
• About 85% of the drinking water in Lebanon comes from
groundwater.
• Surface water tends to have more turbidity and a much greater
chance of microbial contamination, so filtration is almost
always a necessity.
• Groundwater, on the other hand, is uncontaminated and has
relatively little suspended solids, so filtration is less important.
Groundwater, however, may have objectionable dissolved
gases that need to be removed, and hardness (ions of calcium
and magnesium) removal is usually needed.
• As suggested in Figure 6.2, a typical treatment plant for
surface water might include the following sequence of steps:
 Screening to remove relatively large floating and suspended
debris.
 Mixing the water with chemicals that encourage suspended
solids to coagulate into larger particles, which will settle more
easily.
 Flocculation, which is the process of gently mixing the water
and coagulant, allowing the formation of large particles of
flocs.
 Sedimentation, in which the flow is slowed enough so that
gravity will cause the floe to settle, and filtration in which the
effluent is cleaned.
 Sludge processing, in which the mixture of solids and liquids
collected from the settling tank is dewatered and disposed of.
 Disinfection of the liquid effluent to ensure that the water is
free of harmful pathogens. Hardness removal can be added to
this generalized flow diagram if needed.
 Components of Surface Water
Treatment Plant
7.Filters
1.River or Lake 5.Flash Mixing of Coagulant 8. Disinfection
2.Water Intake 5/1 Coagulant 9. Clear (Ground) Water Tank
3.Raw Water Sump 6. Sedimentation Tanks 10Clear Water Sump
4.Low Lift Pumps 6/1 Gentle Mixing Zone 11.High Lift Pumps
6/2 Sedimentation Zone 12.To Water Distribution Network
?
?
Flash Mixing and Coagulation and Flocculation:

• Raw water may contain suspended particles of color,

turbidity, and bacteria that are too small to settle in a
reasonable time period and cannot be removed by
simple filtration.
• The object of coagulation is to alter these particles
in such a way as to allow them to adhere to each
other. Thus they can grow to a size that will allow
removal by sedimentation and filtration.
• Coagulation is considered to be a chemical treatment
process that destabilizes colloidal particles (particles
in the size range of about 0.001 to 1 µm(, as opposed
to the physical treatment operations of flocculation,
sedimentation, and filtration that follow.
• Most colloids of interest in water treatment remain
suspended in solution because they have a net
negative surface charge that cause the particles to
repel each other. The intended action of the
coagulant is to neutralize that charge, allowing the
particles to come together to form larger particles
that can be more easily removed from the raw
water.
The usual coagulant is alum Al2(S04)3 • 18 H20,
although FeC13, FeS04, and other coagulants,
such as polyelectrolytes, can be used. Since the
intention here is simply to introduce the concepts
of water treatment and leave the complexities for
more specialized books, let us just look at the
reactions involving alum.
Alum ionizes in water producing Al3+ ions, some
of which neutralize the negative charges on the
colloids.
Most of the aluminum ions, however, react with
alkalinity in the water (bicarbonate) to form
insoluble aluminum hydroxide. The aluminum
hydroxide adsorbs positive ions from solution
and forms a precipitate of Al (OH)3 and adsorbed
sulfates. The overall reaction is
• If insufficient bicarbonate is available for this
reaction to occur, the pH must be raised, usually by
adding lime, Ca(OH)2, or sodium carbonate,
Na2C03.
• Coagulants are added to the raw water in a chamber
that has rapidly rotating paddles to mix the
chemicals. Detention times in the Flash mix tank are
typically less than one-half minute. Flocculation
follows in a tank that provides gentle agitation for
approximately one-half hour. During this time, the
precipitating aluminum hydroxide attracts colloidal
particles, forming a plainly visible floe. The mixing
in the flocculation tank must be done very
carefully.
Sedimentation:
It must be sufficient to encourage particles to make
contact with each other, enabling the floe to grow in
size, but it cannot be so vigorous that the fragile floe
particles will break apart. Mixing also helps keep
the floe from settling in this tank, rather than in the
sedimentation tank that follows. Figure 6.3 shows a
cross section of a mixing tank followed by a
sedimentation tank.
Sedimentation and Filtration
• After flocculation, the water flows through a
sedimentation basin, or clarifier. A sedimentation basin
is a large circular, or rectangular, concrete tank designed
to hold the water for a long enough time to allow most
of the suspended solids to settle out. Typical detention
times range from 1 to 10 hours.
• The longer the detention time, the bigger and more
expensive the tank must be, but, correspondingly, the
better will be the tank's performance. Solids that collect
on the bottom of the tank may be removed manually by
periodically shutting down the tank and washing out the
collected sludge, or the tank may be continuously and
mechanically cleaned using a bottom scraper. The
effluent from the tank is then filtered.
Rapid-sand filter
• One of the most widely used filtration units is called
a rapid-sand filter, which consists of a layer of
carefully sieved sand on top of a bed of graded
gravels.
• The pore openings between grains of sand are often
greater than the size of the floc particles that are to
be removed, so much of the filtration is
accomplished by means other than simple straining.
• Adsorption, continued flocculation, and
sedimentation in the pore spaces are also important
removal mechanisms.
1/25/2019 Water filtration 55
Washing The Filters:

• When the filter becomes clogged with particles,

which occurs roughly once a day, the filter is
shut down for a short period of time and cleaned
by forcing water backward through the sand for
10 to 15 minutes for washing the filter.

• After cleaning, the sand settles back in place and

operation resumes.