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College of Engineering
Department of Civil Engineering

EnvE 462 Course in Graduate Environmental Engineering

Sampling and Analysis of Environmental Contaminants
  • Back to Environmental Curriculum

    Course Description: Introduction to various instruments and techniques used for sampling and detection of environmental contaminants.

    Prerequisite: CE 356. (3 cr.)

    Text: Environmental Sampling and Analysis for Technicians” Maria Csuros, Lewis Press.

    Topics:
    An overview of the Biosphere to be sampled:

  • Water, soil, air, flora, fauna

    • Quality of Information:
  • Measures of central tendency and dispersion
  • Hypothesis Testing
  • Statistical modeling

    • Introduction to the Laboratory
  • Basic concepts from quantitative analysis
  • Sampling procedures
  • Groundwater sampling
  • Precision and accuracy

    • Sampling the Water Matrix
  • Surface Water
  • Lakes
  • Rivers
  • Groundwater
  • Saturated vs. unsaturated
  • Monitoring well construction
  • Sampling Protocol
  • Sampling Equipment

    • Sampling the soil matrix
  • Deep vs. shallow
  • Organic vs. inorganic
  • Sediments

    • Air Sampling
  • Sampling Biota and Radiation Sampling
  • Remote Sensing, GPS, and GIS

    • Field Instrumentation
  • Total Organics
  • Specific Organics
  • Metals

    • Microscopy
  • Light, SEM, TEM, STEM
  • EDAX, X-Ray Diffraction
  • GC; GC-MS, HPLC, HPLC-MS

    • Spectroscopy
  • AA, ICP, IR

    • Mundane Stuff
  • Specific Ion Electrodes
  • BOD/COD/TOC

    • Laboratory Topics
  • Introduction error propagation in the laboratory.
  • Performing flowmeasurement using both sophisticated and primitive techniques.
  • Automatic samplers, performing time and flow weighted composit samples.
  • Selecting sample size in a soil matrix; using M&M’s and Reeses Pieces as a suragot.
  • Residual saturation.Estimating depth of contamination due to LUST.
  • Various tours and practical experiences (GIS facility, NASA groundwater sampling facility, SWAT lab GC-MS facility, Videos, etc.)