What is modern environmental engineering?

Observing nature in order to master it, is one of the Man’s oldest concern. Recent evolutions in environmental engineering make the idea even more relevant nowadays since technological and scientific improvements made the knowledge of nature useful for many industries.

For a long time, environmental engineering has been referring to the use of engineering principles to protect and preserve the environment. However, recent progress made it much more complex than traditional waste management and water treatment. Finding a new inspiration in its early origins, environmental engineering’s usefulness expands.

An ancient idea

“The roots of the willows do not suffer the banks of the canals to be destroyed; and the branches of the willows, nourished across the thickness of the bank and then cut low, thicken every year and become a single branch, and you have a bank that has life and is of one substance” pointed out Leonardo Da Vinci[1], back in the 16th century. In spite of such early and inspired observations, environmental engineering has preferred to adapt civil engineering solutions to reach its aim.

For a long time, heavy building was preferred over natural solution for stabilizing stream banks for instance. However, “hard” stabilisation techniques are progressively losing their monopoly on such an activity. Just like Da Vinci, other clever observers also found inspiration in nature and developed environmental engineering technics based on natural processes and their knowledge of riparian vegetal. A firm such as Greenbelt Consulting advocates a “Bio-Structural” approach to erosion and slope stability problems”. “Incorporating planned vegetational elements in engineering designs, can be less, more effective, and more adaptable than purely structural solutions” explains Elliott Menashe from Greenbelt’s, “vegetation should also be used in conjunction with geo-textiles and engineered structures whenever appropriate and practical”.

Greenbelt Consulting and shorelines management firms are not the only businesses to put to use modern environmental engineering. In the field of architecture, it was also considered with an early enthusiasm. In the late 1980’s, stainless steel cable started to be used to create vegetal facades. Covered in various plants, such facades has since then been known as green walls.  In 1994, Greenscreen installed the first large-size modern green wall in an entertainment centre in Universal, California. Demonstrating the reliability of its original trellis panel system, the firm revived the Babylonian vertical, hanging garden. Greenscreen updated the concept as well since its green wall was an indoor construction and has proven to be both aesthetic and profitable for the quality of the air inside the building.

Insight of a modern, ecological environmental engineering can be found as early as the 16th century. For the last 40 years, environmental engineering has been developing along with the call for the use of greener technics. Greenscreen and others firms made the very first successes of the profession. Since then, environmental engineering has been spreading to industrial activities.

New applications

After the Earth Summit was held in 1992 in Rio, the need for a greener industry was declared a priority. Industrial companies, especially those who were used to deal with polluting activities soon understood what they could gain from adopting new standards. Being both a source of major pollution as well as highly water consuming, petroleum industry has therefore evolved a lot in the last twenty. That trend culminated in 2011 when Shell started to exploit Pearl GTL in Ras Laffan, Qatar. This plant is the largest of its kind in the world. Not only is it designed to turn natural gas into cleaner fuels, it is also equipped with the most up-to-date water treatment technology.

Veolia Water was appointed by Shell to create the system that would make Pearl GTL the less water-consuming gas-to-liquid petroleum facility in the world.  Veolia water hence created a custom system that retreats a dozen of different effluents. It features some of most efficient filtration equipment, including devices based on the newest reverse osmosis technique. The system implemented in order to enable Pearl GTL to work as a closed circuit. The plant is therefore able to produce petroleum without using a single extra drop of water after it has been started. Pearl GTL is actually perfectly fitted to its Qatari environment, where extreme condition and short water supply require the best engineering skills for water management.

Other highly specific industries also take advantages of environmental engineering. Some technics were discovered or rediscovered by companies just like the use of some microbes and bacteria for soil decontamination purpose. Such a process is called bioremediation and is now regarded as one of the less expensive and most efficient soil decontamination technics. Microbes naturally take part in the process of organic compounds biodegradation.  Hydrocarbons as well as some types of pesticides and solvents can therefore be digested by microflora. Phosphates can be digested by comamonas and hyphomicrobium for instance, whereas cyanide is easily assimilated by thiobacillus.

The ENSR Group made a business of that knowledge of microorganisms. Before it was sold to AECOM Technology Corporation, ENSR used to generate a solid $240 million revenue. The firm is now part of a bigger business but it keeps offering environmental services that have become famous all around the world. With the help of ENSR’s expertise, AECOM therefore took part in soil remediation and site restoration works in Minnesota and Malaysia for instance. In Minnesota, AECOM treated entire networks of water streams with bioremediation. Besides, the Malaysian Government appointed the company a management framework of the countries contaminated land.

In recent years, environmental engineering has accomplished major improvements. Technological achievements in the field of pollution and water treatment testify of those significant steps towards a better use and care of humanity’s natural habitat. Besides, the extension of environmental engineering’s use to a broad variety of purposes, like architecture or the petroleum industry, illustrates that such a science has now reached a new stage of maturity. It can therefore be considered as a multipurpose tool for States, industries and even individuals. This is for the better since environmental engineering first goal is to allow the most efficient use of natural resources and keep them available in the long-run. In this regard it is part of a broader sustainable development effort.

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[1] VINCI (Da), L., “Notes on Military Architecture” in The Literary Works of Leonardo Da Vinci – Vol. 1, PEDRETTI C. (ed), University of California Press, 1977, p. 72.