Environmental Quality and Remediation Technologies (Track 2)
Second year
Design of water and wastewater treatment plants (12 ECTS)
The course covers the theoretical foundation of processes involved in wastewater treatment systems, including qualitative and quantitative wastewater characterization. The students learn how to plan and design the preliminary and primary treatment systems, the biological stages and the treatment and disposal of bio-solids, including physical, chemical and biological processes. The course will also focus on water treatment plants to produce drinking water. After completing this course, students will be able to design, operate and manage wastewater treatment plants in order to meet the effluent requirements and how to combine different treatment processes for the production of drinking water.
Emerging pollutants and remediation strategies (6 ECTS)
In the first part, the course will provide knowledge on sustainability and pollution in the gaseous, liquid and solid state. It will deal with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) applied to materials and processes. The emerging pollutants will be studied from the point of view of their chemical nature, diffusion, solubilization and mixing characteristics. Analytical techniques for the evaluation of the type and quantity of pollutants will be presented, also through the discussion of real cases of pollution. In the second part, the engineering approaches to the resolution of real cases of air pollution, waterways and land will be treated, with particular attention to decision-making strategies.
Contaminant remediation engineering (6 ECTS)
The course provides the students with the skills needed to design remediation and management systems of contaminated sites. The first part of the course deals with the study of the movement of water and the transport of contaminants in the earth subsurface. The second part deals with risk analysis, followed by the design of remediation technologies of contaminated sites (soil and groundwater). Attention will be given also to the design of monitoring systems and groundwater extraction technologies.
Design of urban hydraulic infrastructures (6 ECTS)
The course aims to provide the engineering students the elements necessary for a proper designing and management of the water supply systems and the urban drainage networks in a context of climate change. The course which is design/application based, is organized in a series of lessons and analysis of real case studies, that illustrate the main aspects for a sustainable management of the water resources in urban areas. Particular attention will be given to the new mitigation-restoration approaches that propose the use of best management practices ("green" and "blue" infrastructures).
Design of integrated systems for material recovery from municipal solid waste (6 ECTS)
Basic knowledge is transferred to size the plants that characterize the sector in terms of material recovery from municipal solid waste. Methodologies are provided for characterizing waste and tools for dimensioning a sustainable system based on the principle of urban mining, including collection strategies. In addition to design criteria for biochemical and mechanical processes, the bases are provided for the design of landfills (and their remediation with material recovery).
Design of facilities for energy recovery from waste (6 ECTS)
Basic knowledge is transferred to size the facilities that characterize the sector in terms of energy recovery from waste. Design examples of plants for the production of energy from anaerobic digestion and gasification of special waste are developed. Finally, the criteria for sizing landfill biogas recovery systems are provided.