International Journal of Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing 

Volume 11, Number 3, 2003

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Contents
Contents 

PREDICTING THE ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION FROM BOTTOM CONTAMINATED SEDIMENTS
INDUCED BY HYDRAULIC CUTTERHEAD DREDG, by CHUNG-HWAN JE AND KWANG JIN KIM

        A two-dimensional flocculent sediment transport model is developed to predict the concentration distribution of the resuspended sediments induced by hydraulic cutterhead dredging operations. It predicts the depth average concentration including the effect of flocculent settling of particles in the horizontal plane. The model is applied to New Bedford Harbor dredging site to verify the model’s effectiveness. It is shown that the model predicted reasonably with field data. It is also validated that the model can be an effective estimate tool for quantitatively evaluating the sediment concentrations under the effect of flocculent settling. The model developed here can be used in predicting sediment transport under various hydraulic cutterhead dredging operation conditions. 


A CAD-MLCA INTERFACE FOR THE NEXT-GENERATION DFE TOOLS, by MENGCHU ZHOU, JUN HE, AND REGGIE J. CAUDILL

     With the increasing public concerns of environmental problems, the practice of Design for Environment (DFE) becomes more and more important in today's industry. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides various ways for the environmental assessment of products. Multi-Lifecycle Assessment (MLCA) furthers LCA to multiple lifecycles by considering demanufacturing, remanufacturing, reuse and reengineering of a product and its constituents. One critical step in performing MLCA is to collect design-related data that has to be accurate and complete. The common ways based on manual input for DFE tools are time-consuming and error-prone. To address environmental issues more accurately and efficiently, the next-generation DFE tools are required to extend a traditional LCA model to MLCA model, and integrate both CAD and MLCA tools. This paper presents a CAD-MLCA interface that can automatically extract all related design information from a product's CAD software and populate it to the database used for MLCA. The interface provides a robust mechanism for the integration of CAD and MLCA software. Its design involves both the database structure and population algorithm implemented in JAVA/JDBC. With such interface, CAD tools and multi-lifecycle assessment software are integrated to allow designers to make immediate environmental performance evaluations of their product designs. Thereby, users can make their changes, if needed, on-line. This work provides critical support for the next-generation DFE tools and overcomes a challenging technical barrier facing in the wide DFE application in industrial design practice.   

LENVIRONMENTAL DETECTION OF EXPLOSIVES AND AVAILABLE TECHNIQUES: A REVIEW, by YELLETI S., WILKINS E

    The detection of explosives, energetic materials, and their associated compounds for security screening, demining, detection of unexploded ordinance (UXO), and pollution monitoring is an active area of research. Detection of trace amounts of explosives in environmental samples is currently a labor-intensive laboratory technique requiring expensive, sophisticated instrumentation[Steinfeld et.al., 1998]. Currently, there are several projects attempting to provide techniques for automation of the analysis based on improvements of spectroscopic analytical methods[Steinfeld et.al., 1998]. Sensors are under development for in-sit, rapid determination of explosives in environmental samples[Narang et.al., 1997, Bart et.al.,1997]. Time, cost, and casualties associated with demining efforts underscore the need for improved detection techniques. A wide variety of detection methods and an even wider range of physical chemistry issues are involved in this very challenging area. Chemical sensor and biosensor technologies currently offer great potential for conducting measurements in real-time and under field conditions. Development of dedicated portable instruments with a high degree of automation is viewed as one of the mainstream challenges in environmental monitoring and control. We propose a novel approach for detection of explosives based on enzyme electrochemical biosensing technology. The enzymatic biological recognition element will provide for the selectivity of the assay, and through its catalytic activity, for the lower limits of detection. The desired field sensor must, at a minimum, demonstrate reproducibility, the necessary level of sensitivity, portability, instrumental stability, and fast system response times. This review focuses on an electrochemical biosensor for detection of trace amounts of explosives with short response times.