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• Classification of Environment
• On the basis of basic structure, the environment can be
divided as
(i) Physical (abiotic), and (ii) Biological (biotic)
environment.
• Physical (abiotic) environment is subdivided as,
(i) Lithosphere (solid earth), (ii) Hydrosphere (water
Relation b/w human and environment
• The relationship of human and environment has influenced
the development of human society.
• In this context, 3 aspects of human are;
i. Physical man is a component of the biological communities and as
such requires basic elements of physical environment such as air,
water, food and habitat etc. Like others biological populations and
release wastes in the ecosystem.
ii. Social man establishes the social institutions, forms the social
organizations and formulates laws and policies to safeguards his
existence.
iii. Economical man derives and utilize resources from the physical
and biological environment with his skills and technologies.
The changing relationship b/w human and
environment (Pre-historical to modern times)
• Period of hunting and food gathering.
• Period of animal domestic action and pastoralism.
• Period of plant domestication and agriculture.
• Period of science, technology and industrialization.
• Biosphere:
• The physical elements of environment (space, land, water
bodies, climate, soils, rocks and minerals) and biological
elements (plants, animals, micro organism and man)
constitute the biosphere.
• Biosphere is a life supporting layer which surrounds the
earth and makes plat and animal life possible.
• It consists of all the living organism, energy and physical
environment.
• There are continuous interactions between living organisms
and physical environment.
• The avg. thickness of the biosphere or life supporting layer
consists of air, water, soil and rock is about 30 km.
• The upper limit of biosphere is determined by the
availability of O2, moisture, temperature, and air.
• The lower limit of the biosphere is determined by the
availabilities of required amount of O2 and light which can
sustain life.
• Thus the depth of the biosphere over the land is upto the
depth of the deepest root of the trees or the depth upto
which burrowing organism can live.
• Effect of human activities on environment:
• The impact of modern technologies has led to series of
changes in the biotic and abiotic components.
• Disturbance in one of the element of nature (air, water,
land, etc.) gives rise to an imbalance in others.
• Human factors sometimes aggravate natural
environment process to cause disaster (earthquake,
floods, cyclones etc.) for human society.
• They result in heavy loss of life and properties.
• Environmental hazards for human health are as follows:
• Air pollution causes respiratory diseases (asthma, chronic
obstructive)
• Water pollution causes enteric diseases
• Solid waste pollution causes vector-borne diseases (infections)
• Toxic waste causes cancer and neurological disorders
Environmental disturbances
• OZONE DEPLETION
• The ozone layer is a thin layer of gas (O3) 15-50 kms above the
earth.
• The ozone layer protects us from excessive levels of harmful
ultraviolet radiation.
• Ozone depletion refers to the thinning of the ozone layer,
which allows more ultraviolet radiation to reach the earth’s
surface.
• Thinning of ozone layer was discovered in 1980s and ozone
holes at north and south poles.
• Major cause for ozone depletion is chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
• These are the chemicals invented in 1920s, used in refrigerator
and air-conditioner, coolant, foam, solvent, aerosol spray cans.
• CFCs are very harmful to ozone, especially at cold temperature
(north and south poles).
• United nations environmental program is working on reducing
the use of ozone depleting chemicals.
• Montréal protocol (1987) is an agreement b/w industrialized
countries to reduce and eventually to stop the use of CFCs and
Consequences of ozone depletion
• EFFECT ON HUMAN HEALTH
– High exposure to UV radiation can weaken the human
immunity; cause skin and eye cancer.
• EFFECT ON PLANT LIFE
– Unacceptable growth of plants, lead to the loss of plant
species, reduce crop yield, water logging etc.
• EFFECT ON MARINE ECOSYSTEM
– Reduce phytoplankton members, damage the early
developmental stages of fish and other marine life
• The mass in Eq. (6) is expressed as moles of gas. Also note the temperature is
expressed in kelvins (K), where
• There are a number of ways to express pressure; in Eq. (6), we
have used atmospheres. One atmosphere of pressure equals
101.325 kPa (Pa is the abbreviation for Pascals). One
atmosphere is also equal to 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi),
so 1 psi = 6.89 kPa. Finally, 100 kPa is called a bar, and is a
millibar, which is the unit of pressure often used in
meteorology.
Material Balance
• Everything has to go somewhere is a simple way to express one
of the most fundamental engineering principles. More precisely,
the law of conservation of mass says that when chemical
reactions take place, matter is neither created nor destroyed
(though in nuclear reactions, mass can be converted to energy).
• What this concept allows us to do is track materials, for
example pollutants, from one place to another with mass
balance equations. This is one of the most widely used tools in
analyzing pollutants in the environment.
• The first step in a mass balance analysis is to define the
particular region in space that is to be analyzed. This is often
called the control volume.
• As examples, the control volume might include anything from a
glass of water or simple chemical mixing tank, to an entire coal-
fired power plant, a lake, a stretch of stream, an air basin above
a city, or the globe itself.
• By picturing an imaginary
boundary around the region,
as is shown in above
mentioned Figure.
• We can then begin to quantify
the flow of materials across the
boundary as well as the
FIGURE A materials balance diagram. accumulation and reaction of
materials
• A substance that enters the control volume haswithin
many the region.
possible fates.
• Some of it may leave the region unchanged, some of it may
accumulate within the boundary, and some of it may be converted
to some other substance (e.g., entering CO may be oxidized to CO2
within the region).
• There is also the possibility that more substance may be produced
(e.g., CO may be produced by cigarette smoking within the control
volume of a room).
• Thus, using above mentioned Figure as a rate
The reaction guide,
maythe
be following
positive if
materials balance equation can be writtenof for
generation each substance
the substance of
is faster than
interest: its decay, or negative if it is decaying
faster than it is being produced.
• Frequently, this Eq. can be simplified. The most common
simplification results when steady state or equilibrium conditions
can be assumed.
• Equilibrium simply means that there is no accumulation of mass
with time; the system has had its inputs held constant for a long
enough time that any transients have had a chance to die out.
• Pollutant concentrations are constant.
• Hence the accumulation rate (in terms of Eq.) is set equal to zero,
and problems can usually be solved using just simple algebra.
• A second simplification to Eq., results when a substance is
conserved within the region in question, meaning there is no
reaction occurring—no radioactive decay, bacterial decomposition,
or chemical decay or generation.
• For such conservative substances, the reaction rate is 0.
• Examples of substances that are typically modeled as conservative
include total dissolved solids in a body of water, heavy metals in
soils, and carbon dioxide in air.
• Radioactive radon gas in a home or decomposing organic wastes
Steady-State Conservative Syste
• The simplest systems to analyze
are those in which steady state
can be assumed (so the
accumulation rate equals to 0),
and the substance in question is
conservative (so the reaction rate
equals = 0). In these cases,
previous equation simplifies to the
Figure A steady-state conservative
system. Pollutants enter and leave the following:
region at the same rate. • Consider the steady-state
• The system contained within theconservative systembeshown
boundaries might a lake, in
a
section of a free flowing stream, orabove Figure.
the mass of air above a city. One
input to the system is a stream (of water or air, for instance) with a
flow rate Qs (volume/time) and pollutant concentration Cs
(mass/volume). The other input is assumed to be a waste stream with
flow rate QW and pollutant concentration Cw. The output is a mixture
with flow rate Qm and pollutant concentration Cm. If the pollutant is
conservative, and if we assume steady state conditions, then a mass
balance based on above Eq. allows us to write the following:
EXAMPLE 1. Two Polluted Streams
A stream flowing at 10.0 m3/s has a tributary feeding into
it with a flow of 5.0 m3/s. The stream’s concentration of chloride
upstream of the junction is 20.0 mg/L, and the tributary chloride
concentration is 40.0 mg/L. Treating chloride as a conservative
substance and assuming complete mixing of the two streams,
find the downstream chloride concentration.
Solution: The first step in solving a mass balance problem is to
sketch the problem, identify the “region” or control volume that
we want to analyze, and label the variables as has been done in
given Figure for this problem.
Batch Systems with Non-conservative
Pollutants
• By definition, there is no contaminant flow into or out of a
batch system, yet the contaminants in the system undergo
chemical, biological, or nuclear reactions fast enough that they
must be treated as non-conservative substances.
• A batch system (reactor) assumes that its contents are
homogeneously distributed and is often referred to as a
completely mixed batch reactor (CMBR).
• The bacterial concentration in a closed water storage tank may
be considered a non-conservative pollutant in a batch reactor
because it will change with time even though no water is fed
into or withdrawn from the tank.
• Similarly, the concentration of carbon dioxide in a poorly
ventilated room can be modeled as a non-conservative batch
system because the concentration of carbon dioxide increases
as people in the room breathe. For a batch reactor, (a)
• As discussed before, the reaction rate is the sum of the rates
of decay, which are negative, and the rates of generation,
which are positive.
• In a zero-order reaction, the rate of reaction, r(C) , of the
substance is not dependent on the amount of the substance
present and can be expressed as, (b)
• where k is a reaction rate coefficient, which has the units of
mass .volume-1 . time-1 (MgL-1T-1).
• The rate of evaporation of water from a bucket is a zero-
order reaction because the rate of loss of the water is not
dependent on the amount of water in the bucket but is only
dependent on the nearly constant surface area of the water
exposed to the air.
• Using (a) and (b), the mass balance for the zero-order
reaction of a substance in a batch reactor is
• The Eq. is written as a 0-order decay, denoted by the -ve
sign on the right-hand side of the Eq. V is the volume
• To solve the differential equation, the variables are separated
and integrated as
• which yields,