MENU
  • ASEE Logo
  • Give
    Give
    ASEE Donations...
    Classified Volunteer
    Login
  • Join Login Volunteer Classified Give
    Give
    ASEE Donations...



About
  • Overview
    • Mission, Vision, Goals
    • Public Policy Statements
    • Constitution
    • Bylaws
    • Organizational Structure
    • Investment Policy
    • Financial Policy
  • Our History
  • Staff Contacts
  • Leadership
    • Board Of Directors
    • Academy Of Fellows
    • Past Board Members
    • Advisory Committees
    • Representatives to External Organizations
    • Executive Director's Message
    • Meeting Minutes
  • Volunteer
  • Careers at ASEE
  • Privacy Statement
I Am A...
  • Member
      Login Required
    • Your Member Page
    • Membership Directory
    • Financials
    • Volunteer for Task Force
      • COVID Recovery
      • Engineering Culture
    • No Login Required
    • Awards
    • Divisions, Fellows, and Campus Reps
    • Sections and Zones
    • Resources
  • Prospective Individual/Organizational Member
    • About ASEE
    • Individual Membership
    • Institutional Membership
    • Major Activities
  • Donor
  • Prospective Partner or Sponsor
  • Advertiser
  • Fellowship Seeker
    • About Fellowships
    • High School
    • Undergraduate
    • Graduate
    • Post-Doctoral
    • Other Programs
Events
  • Conferences and Meetings
    • 2022 Annual Conference & Exposition
    • 2021 Virtual Annual Conference & Exposition
    • 2020 Virtual Annual Conference & Exposition
    • Section & Zone Meetings
  • Council Events
    • Conference for Industry and
      Education Collaboration (CIEC)
    • CMC Workforce Summit
    • Engineering Deans Institute (EDI)
    • Research Leadership Institute (RLI) (Formerly ERC)
    • Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • EDC Public Policy Colloquium (PPC)
  • Featured Events
    • Frontiers in Education
    • NETI
    • CoNECD
    • First Year Engineering Experience
    • Workforce Summit
  • Future Conference Dates
Publications
  • News
    • Newsletters
    • eGFI
    • Division Publications
  • Journals and Conference Papers
    • Overview
    • Journal of Engineering Education
    • Advances in Engineering Education
    • Conference Proceedings
    • Section Proceedings
    • Zone Proceedings
    • PEER
    • Plagiarism
  • Monographs and Reports
  • Prism Magazine
  • Data
    • Profiles of E&ET Colleges
    • Case Study Series: Engineering-Enhanced Liberal Education
Impact
  • Public Policy Statements
  • Data Analysis
  • Annual Reports
  • Diversity
Education & Careers
  • Academic Job Opportunities
  • Course Catalog
  • Engineering Education Research and Innovation
    • Engineering Education Community Resource
  • PreK-12
    • eGFI Teachers
    • eGFI Students
  • Engineering Teacher PD Endorsement
Calendar
2020 Annual Conference
The ASEE 2020 Virtual Annual Conference content is available.
See More....
  • International Forum
    • Past Forums
  • 2020 Research Leadership Institute(RLI) (Formerly ERC)
    • Overview
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Program Schedule
    • ERC Past Conferences
  • 2018 Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Program Schedule
    • ETLI Sponsorship Options
  • 2017 Global Colloquium
  • Pre K-12 Workshop
    • Call for Proposals
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Sponsors
    • Program Schedule
    • Past Conferences
  • STEP Grantees Meeting
  • Annual Conference
    • Past Conferences
  • International Forum
    • Past Forums
  • 2020 Research Leadership Institute(RLI) (Formerly ERC)
    • Overview
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Program Schedule
    • ERC Past Conferences
  • 2018 Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Program Schedule
    • ETLI Sponsorship Options
  • 2017 Global Colloquium
  • Pre K-12 Workshop
    • Call for Proposals
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Sponsors
    • Program Schedule
    • Past Conferences
  • STEP Grantees Meeting
  • Annual Conference
    • Past Conferences

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Integrating Engineering, Innovation, and Research at All Levels: An Educational Model for Water Reuse Design

Presented at Environmental Engineering Division Technical Session 3

Growing urban populations, increasing water consumption, and decreasing predictability of climate all point to an ever-increasing need to improve water-use efficiency and watershed management around the world. Moreover, providing clean water and restoring the nitrogen cycle, are two of the 14 National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges, that future engineers will need to act upon. Therefore, treating once-used water on-site to safe effluent-reuse standards—rather than using the water just once and flushing it back to an expensive, high-maintenance centralized treatment plant—has the potential to help reverse this trend by restoring the local water-nutrient cycle.
With these considerations, in the spring of 2016, a capstone project was designed to task students of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University to provide solutions to those Engineering Grand Challenges. The project involved the selection of an on-site wastewater reclamation and reuse technology, followed by the design, construction, operation, and testing of the selected technology.
A tidal flow wetland was chosen and it was tested in the laboratory of civil infrastructure at Northeastern University. The objectives of this pilot system were twofold. First, as a research tool, for undergraduate and graduate students; this system can be used to build data to show the reliability of tidal flow treatment as a decentralized wastewater treatment approach for residential wastewater, as well as optimize constituent removal by assessing the impacts of adjusting various treatment parameters (recycle ratio, treatment cycles per day, constituent concentrations, etc.). Secondly, as an education tool: the system can be used to teach undergraduate students about alternative wastewater treatment, fluid dynamics and hydraulics, material properties, and even Arduino and C++ programming. Also, as literature suggests that the major obstacles in the widespread application of water reuse projects are the public perception and the institutional barriers, addressing the stigma of water reuse trough education was deemed to be vital, together with the pilot, to demonstrate the feasibility of water reuse technologies. Therefore, as part of this objective, the project included a public education component, which main outcome was the creation of a website (northeastern.edu/waternotwaste).
The project was successfully completed during the spring of 2016, and handed to the Civil and Environmental Engineering department. The system has, since then, been used for the Young Scholar Program (YSP) over the summer of 2016 and is currently being used for an undergraduate research project funded by the Northeastern University Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors Award. The paper will discuss the implementation of this type of capstone projects and provide suggestions on how to integrate design projects, innovation, and research for undergraduate education which address the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges.

Authors
  1. Dr. Annalisa Onnis-Hayden Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2406-6242 Northeastern University [biography]

    Dr. Annalisa Onnis-Hayden is an Associate Teaching Professor in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University. She received her MS and PhD in Environmental Engineering, at Northeastern University and University of Cagliari, Italy. She has over ten years’ teaching and research experience in Environmental Engineering. Her research activity mainly focus on biological nutrient removal (both Nitrogen and Phosphorus), removal of emerging contaminants in wastewater, microbial ecology in engineered systems, as well as treatment for water reuse and nutrient recovery. She is the coordinator of the BEST program, initiated to offer opportunities and attract undergraduate and multidisciplinary students to participate in research and/or learn new applications of molecular biotechnology for environmental engineering.

  2. Dr. Carolina Beatriz Venegas-Martinez Northeastern University [biography]

    PhD in Environmental Engineering with 14 years of experience in the water & wastewater treatment field, including 5+ years of experience teaching courses related to water quality, water/wastewater treatment, and water resources/environmental management. Currently working as the Academic Operations Manager of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University. Her research interests are on Environmental Health and Water Remediation, mainly on biological treatment for wastewater and water reuse.

  3. Marissa P. Dreyer Northeastern University [biography]

    Graduate student in Bioengineering at Northeastern University.

Download paper (809 KB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session


  • Follow Us
  • twitter
  • facebook
  • youtube
  • instagram
  • linkedin
  • 1818 N Street N.W. Suite 600, Washington DC 20036

  • Telephone: 202.331.3500 | Fax: 202.265.8504

  • © 2022 Copyright: ASEE.org All rights reserved. Privacy Policy.