Waste Management Engineering Explained: Systems, Recycling & Sustainability

Waste Management Engineering Explained: Systems, Recycling & Sustainability is an open-access, comprehensive undergraduate-level engineering curriculum module designed for engineering students, environmental consultants, and municipal infrastructure planners. Aligned with core ABET and CEAB civil, environmental, and systems engineering syllabi, this module provides an in-depth treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW) logistics, hazardous waste containment, sanitary landfill hydraulics, thermochemical Waste-to-Energy (WTE) conversion, and automated material recovery.

Curricular & Technical Highlights:

• Functional System Architecture: Employs an IDEF0 (Input-Control-Output-Mechanism) workflow to demonstrate how heterogeneous solid waste streams and site parameters are transformed under environmental protection standards (e.g., US EPA Subtitle D, Basel Convention) into safe, compliant material recovery, energy generation, and disposal operations.
• Sanitary Landfill Geotechnics & Hydraulics: Detailed analytical formulations covering leachate head development via the hydrologic water balance method, advective contaminant seepage through composite HDPE/compacted clay liners using Darcy's Law, and LandGEM first-order microbial methane generation kinetics.
• Thermochemical & Biological Transformation: Quantitative modeling of mass balance volume reduction in mass-burn incineration, volatile solids destruction in anaerobic digestion, and carbon-to-nitrogen (C:N) optimization for aerobic composting.
• Automated Resource Recovery Logistics: Analysis of modern Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), evaluating optical Near-Infrared (NIR) polymer sorting, eddy current non-ferrous extraction, and dynamic collection route optimization via IoT bin fill telemetry.
• Comparative Systems Engineering: A multi-criteria systems trade-off matrix evaluating engineered sanitary landfills, mass-burn WTE incineration, Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), anaerobic digestion, and windrow composting across mass reduction, capital intensity, residual risks, and exergy yields.
• Worked Quantitative Engineering Problems: Step-by-step numerical calculations covering landfill volumetric airspace capacity and lifespan estimation, methane energy recovery and electrical generation, leachate generation via the water balance method, MRF sorting yield, WTE incineration volume reduction, food waste anaerobic digestion biogas yield, and composting C:N stoichiometric blending.
• Self-Assessment & Concept Review Modules: Comprehensive interactive review questions, analytical scenario investigations, and quantitative problem sets.

Canonical web edition and interactive dynamic simulators: https://prep4uni.online/stem/physical-technologies/environmental-engineering/waste-management-engineering/