Environmental and water resources engineering is a broad discipline dedicated to addressing environmental issues in air, water, and soil. It includes a variety of sub-disciplines, such as water quality engineering, water resources engineering, outdoor and indoor air quality engineering, ocean engineering, and hazardous waste management. Sustainable engineering concepts are infused into these sub-disciplines and include the long-term environmental, economic, and social consequences of engineering practice.
The following is a glimpse of what environmental engineering students do at the University of Texas at Austin:
- evaluate removal of pharmaceuticals and personal care products for direct potable reuse
- design nanomaterials for treatment applications and assess their environmental impact
- model the impact of extreme events such as floods and droughts
- quantify human exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollutants
- design efficient propulsors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ships
- study judicious energy use in the distribution and treatment of water (water-energy nexus)
- design turbines to extract the energy of ocean currents
- quantify the impact of the flow of water and its contaminants in rivers and coastal systems
- design stormwater control facilities to improve surface water quality
- design passive treatment systems to improve the air we breathe indoors
- holistically evaluate "green" technologies via life-cycle assessment
- remediate soil and ground waters impacted by unintended pollutant releases
