Search: Course, Air quality

Study of air pollutants in indoor environments such as private residences, offices, schools, and commercial and public buildings. Overview of the factors that govern indoor pollutant concentrations. Building ventilation principles and practice. Detailed exploration of characteristics and control of several pollutant classes, such as radon and its decay products, volatile organic compounds, and combustion byproducts. Elements of a control strategy

This introductory course is designed to explore fundamental legal and policy issues in environmental law. By focusing on constitutional issues and a limited number of federal statutes--principally the the Administrative Procedure Act, the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; CERCLA (the Superfund law),; the National Environmental Policy Act; and the Endangered Species Act--the course exposes students to the principal approaches to environmental law (litigation, command and control regulation, market incentives, and providing information), as well as to the challenges of setting environmental policy goals and choosing policy targets. The course is designed both for students who intend to pursue environmental studies further and for those who simply want to gain a basic understanding of this key area of public policy.

Quantitative overview of the properties of environmental contaminants and the transport and transformation processes that govern their concentrations in air and water. Fundamental topics include environmental chemical equilibria and kinetics, reactor models, and elementary transport phenomena. Selected applications to issues in water quality engineering, air quality engineering, and hazardous waste management.

An introduction to air pollution and the chemistry of earth's atmosphere. The fundamental natural processes controlling trace gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and how anthropogenic activity has affected those processes at the local, regional, and global scales. Specific topics include stratospheric ozone depletion, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, smog, and changes in the oxidation capacity of the troposphere

Principles underlying the use of air monitoring methods in industry and the environment. Topics include behavior of gases, vapors, and aerosols; mechanisms of absorption and elimination of inhaled toxicants; methods for measuring of airborne chemicals.

The fate of contaminants in the environment is controlled by transport processes within a single media and between media. The similarities in contaminant dispersion within air, surface water, and groundwater will be emphasized. Interphase transport processes such as volatilization and absorption will then be considered from an equilibrium perspective followed by the kinetics of mass transfer across environmental interfaces.

Study of the behavior of gaseous and particulate air pollutants, with application to understanding fate of pollutants, control device performance, and measurement systems. Particle and gas deposition. Light scattering and visibility impairment. Particle-gas interactions. Issues in monitoring and experimentation.

Quantitative overview of the characterization and control of air pollution problems. Summary of fundamental chemical and physical processes governing pollutant behavior. Analysis of key elements of the air pollution system: sources and control techniques, atmospheric transformation, atmospheric transport, modeling, and air quality management.

Fundamentals of combustion, flame structure, flame speed, flammability, ignition, stirred reaction, kinetics and nonequilibrium processes, pollutant formation. Application to engines, energy production and fire safety.

A survey of biological and physical environmental problems, focusing on geologic hazards, water and air quality, water supply, solid waste, introduced and endangered species, preservation of wetland ecosystems. Interaction of technical, social, and political approaches to environmental management.