Photo Credit: Alex Mead
Pictured above is the Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant solids incinerator in Detroit, MI. This waste water plant is the largest of its kind in the United States. The three smoke stacks vent the incinerators that are used to burn the solids retrieved from the clarifiers. The smoke is actually a yellowish green and the smell surrounding the facility is nearly unbearable, which is typically why waste water plants are located away from large populations.
Photo Credit: Alex Mead
Seen here is a mountain dam on a river near Estes Park, Colorado. In the United State there are approximately 75 000 dams ranging from massive arch dams like the Hoover Dam or Glen Canyon Dam to small mass acting dams like this one. However, most dams in the United States aren’t hydroelectric dams, meaning they make electricity by passing water through turbines, like the large famous dams everybody knows about. Perhaps as demand for electricity increases these smaller dams will be retrofitted to capture the energy that is present in their reservoirs.
Photo Credit: Alex Mead
Seen above is a street that has been flooded due to a storm event overwhelming the storm water sewer system. Storm water sewers are typically designed, depending on the location, for approximately a 10 year event period. This means they can handle a storm that happens on average only once every 10 years. To design for event periods much more than this would be a poor decision due to the large increase of additional resources that would be needed to accomplish these designs. As with every engineering design problem, optimal sewer design is a balance of performance and varying measures of cost.
Photo Credit: Alex Mead
Seen here is the inside of a storm interceptor basin located near Detroit, Michigan. Most of the time this massive water storage unit sits dry, however, when a large storm hits the area, and dumps more precipitation than the sewer infrastructure can handle this tank begins to fill. The concept is that this tank can be filled and take up the extra water that is put into the system by the large rain event that the sewer system can’t handle. The water in the tank can then be filtered through the typical process once the precipitation event is over and the load on the system is lower. Tanks like this one are important because over flowing the sewer system usually results in a release of contaminated water into a natural water way.
Photo Credit: Alex Mead
This is the spillway of a medium sized dam on the Huron River in Michigan. When water is released down the spillway it exits under a sluice gate in the supercritical flow state. Supercritical flow, however, has too high a velocity for the natural river bottom and will cause an erosion issue. To prevent this fast flowing erosive water force concrete blocks, called baffle piers, are added just downstream. This causes a hydraulic jump to occur transferring the flow from supercritical flow to subcritical flow. Subcritical flow is closer to natural river flow and is therefore less of an erosive force. The baffle piers of this dam can be seen under the water about two-thirds up the page.
Photo Credit: Alex Mead
Seen here is an extremely valuable piece of equipment to many home owners who have septic tanks across the country. This machine empties the septic tank of its built up solids via a hose from the back end of the truck. Emptying the solids is important to do every two to three years to maintain proper septic tank function for an ordinary family home. The solids are then delivered to a local waste water treatment plant for disposal in the manner that ordinary municipal waste is dealt with.
Photo Credit: Karl Jansen
Pictured here is a fish ladder located at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks (a.k.a. Ballard Locks) in Seattle, WA. A fish ladder is simply a structure that allows migratory fish to swim upstream or around a barrier placed in the water by humans. In this case, the structures were a dam and some locks. The need for fish ladders was recognized after the placement of barriers in aquatic ecosystems had negative effects on fish populations.
Photo Credit: Karl Jansen
Pictured here is an example of what you call open channel flow. This is a small stream of water, which eventually flows into a a pond or river. A channel is basically a geographic area where water is able to flow within some sort of physical boundary, such is the banks of a river. Open channel flow is a sub-field of free surface hydraulics.
Photo Credit: Karl Jansen
Pictured here is a small weir. A weir is simply a wall or some sort of barrier placed within an open channel which restricts the movement of water as it flows downstream. Weirs are used to change the flow characteristics in a stream or river and manage the flow rate within the channel. In this way, engineers can use devices such as the weir to prevent flooding and sustain the safety of the public.