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Environmental engineering is one of the most popular, complex and fast growing disciplines in engineering. The scope of environment includes issues from public health, aesthetics, and impact of all development activities, pollution control legislation, standards, regulations, guidelines and their enforcement. Traditionally the application of engineering principles for the protection and enhancement of the quality of environment and protection of public health was called as sanitary engineering or public health engineering. Around 1968 this was changed to environmental engineering.

For conceiving environmental engineering, one has to consider the definition of engineering itself. Engineering may be defined as the application, under limits of scientific principles for the planning, design, execution, operation and maintenance of structures, equipment and systems for the development and benefit of the society. Here the word benefit is more important than the development. The so-called development in some cases may not be in real benefit of the society.

The environmental engineer plans, designs, executes, operates and maintains the water, wastewater and solid waste management plants. Clean, bacteriologically safe, potable drinking water protects and enhances public health. Liquid and solid waste management is a necessary step for healthy living. They also deal with air pollution control. The resulting pure cleaner air is conducive to people’s good health and prevents the building and other materials from the harmful effects of air pollution. The environmental engineer cares for the energy requirements of the society and the ways and means to protect the environment against the various pollutions created through the production and consumption of various goods and comfort conditions. It is the duty of environment engineer to assess the environmental impacts of the various development and other activities. In general one has to work to have sustainable and holistic development. Of course there are always constraints of resources, knowledge, human nature, social and racial considerations that limit the achievement of these goals.

Therefore the environmental engineering is defined as the application of scientific and engineering principles, under limits, for the protection and enhancement of the environment that includes the biotic and abiotic both components.

The environment exists in dynamic equilibrium of its biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) elements. The solar energy induced photosynthesis synthesizes the carbon as the plant tissue and we get matter in various forms from the trees. The carnivores, humans and animals consume the edible matter. They convert it into the energy required to sustain their lives. Their excreta comes near to the nature and the natural scavengers, bacteria and others convert it into inorganic matter like nutrients due to the biological decomposition. The roots of the plants, to form the edible matter again, extract these nutrients. Like this the nutrient cycle, material cycle, energy cycle and other cycles like hydrological cycle keep on existing until there is a great shock given by the human beings.

“Nature has enough for satisfying everybody’s need but not for anybody’s greed”. Human beings have lost their natural wisdom in want of power to overcome the nature. Since mid century the word has lost nearly one fifth of the topsoil from its cropland, a fifth of its tropical rainforests and animal species. Rapid industrialization and urbanization has increased carbon dioxide levels to the
point where global climate is being affected. The protective ozone shield is being depleted because of the chlorofluorocarbons. The forest, which is a complete ecosystem, is being converted into dead forests. The biodiversity is reducing everywhere in the world.

Biodiversity gives strength to the ecosystem against crisis. Only a well-diversified community can sustain against the extreme conditions. In quest of comfort conditions and well-secured life we have adopted a system, which is completely away from nature. We have made computers for paper less office work but the energy in making and running the computers is more than the savings made.

Of course there are other advantages of computers in computation, up keeping of data etc. But the materials used in making the computer and the disposal of the obsolete ones are drastically against the environment.

The quest of more and more comfort has fetched us far away from natural environment. The input of energy in building sector is increasing day by day. The requirements of both heating and cooling are becoming more and more energy exhaustive. At present the energy requirement in whole world is mainly met by fossil fuels. Nature has created the coal and petroleum in millions of years and we have exhausted them in hundreds of years. In the last 300 years we have consumed most of the coal and almost all of the petroleum products.

Out of the 1,30,000 MW installed capacity of electricity production in India about 66% is by fossil fuels (coal+ petroleum products), 24% by hydropower, 4% by nuclear means and only 6% by renewable energy resources like solar, wind, biomass including small hydropower plants. Still there is a very large potential of renewable energy resources unutilized but the present availability of fossil fuels and the present high cost of electricity production through R.E.S. has restrained their share to only 6%. With the advancement of technology and scarcity of fossil fuels the cost of RES will come down and there share shall increase, but is it the sustainable development? In modern context the idea of sustainable development immerged in the Earth Summit at Rio-De-Janeiro in June 1992 that let us plan a development in which the generations to come, may not become deprived of the resources which we are using today. To achieve this aim we have to control our present rate of consumption of the available resources like the fossil fuels, ground water and conserve the bio diversity and the natural cycles like the hydrological cycle.

While considering the production, consumption or utilization we have also to consider the other part that is pollution. Mixing of unwanted hazardous elements in anything is known as pollution, like mixing of sewage in fresh body of water, mixing of gases, like oxides of nitrogen, oxides of sulphur etc. in the air, increase of noise level etc. Actually the present trend of living is a serious cause of creating pollution in all spheres of life. Today the prosperity, wealth or living standard of a country is measured in terms of the per capita electricity consumption per year. That way India with its per capita consumption of 350 Kwh per year is considered far behind the U.S. which has around 20 times more than this. The advancement of a society is measured in terms of the measures of comfort like air conditioners, or conveyance like bigger and bigger expensive luxury cars. Taller buildings, more and more precious artificial fabric and so on. Production and maintenance of all these has created so much land, water and noise pollution that has overcome the advantages of all these so called advancements. Thus the challenging aspect of environmental engineering is to make balance between the rapid changes in the field of science, technology, health etc. and the very existence of life. Though environmentalism or the environmental consciousness is ancient the environmentalism became an organized force only in 1960s. It started with the publication of the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson on the pesticide DDT in 1962. Actually the exponential growth of population and the worldwide consumerism imposed a great load on earth’s natural resources and waste management systems.

This text aims at the fundamental, primary knowledge for every one who has a concern about environment. The chapters have been designed to quench the thrust of knowledge of a person, let it be a scientist, an engineer or any one who is concerned about protection of environment and thus a well wisher of society.

This book has been written after gaining 10 years experience of working in the public health engineering department of Rajasthan and 20 years experience of teaching civil engineering students, subjects like environmental engineering, ecology and environmental dynamics, solid waste management etc. Recently environmental engineering has been introduced as a primary course common to first year students of all branches who opt for it. This text is on basic environmental engineering that covers the syllabus of first year semester scheme of the Rajasthan Technical University and other universities. Some portion of the martial presented in this book has bean derived from the work of others, their contribution is greatly ackoweldged. The recommendation of manual of water supply and treatment, manual on Sewerage and Sewage Treatment and manual on Solid Waste Management prepared by the Central public Health and Environmental Engineering organization, Government of India, Ministry of urban development have been closely followed.

I acknowledge my debts to my parents for their blessings, my wife Bharati for her constant support, my daughter Ruchira for her help on computer, my son Saurabh and daughter-in law Surabhi for encouragement. I express my deep sense of gratitude to my teacher Prof. Damodar Sharma, Vice chancellor Rajasthan Technical University, Kota for being a constant source of inspiration for me. I thank Prof. M. P. Poonia Principal Engineering College Bikaner for his valuable suggestions. I thank Dr. A. K. Mathur and other colleagues of my department for their help. I thank Mr. S. Gupta, Managing Director, New Age International Publishers, New Delhi for prompt publication.

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And the US automotive industry is in dire straits. It did not learn from the 1973 energy crisis. It did not learn from the Chrysler experience. It did not learn from Toyota. It continued to depend on old, worn out concepts and on CEO’s that are kept in their positions by nepotism and by boards that do not understand the automotive business.

In a joint effort the Big Three are asking the US government for a $25 billion loan. They argue that government demands for increased fuel efficiency are too expensive to implement and require huge amounts of capital for retooling.

Let’s assume for the moment that the argument has some merit. But how can companies with worldwide manufacturing facilities fail to notice the steady increase in fuel prices and not see the warning signs hoisted by governments across the world that want to limit greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption. This neglect is inexcusable. Efforts of US and European governments to limit fuel consumption are misdirected, counterproductive, and coercive. A comprehensive analysis quickly reveals that we must indeed limit and eventually halt greenhouse gas emissions.

OPEC countries will continue their unstoppable increases of petroleum prices. Electric cars, CNG powered cars, and hydrogen powered cars cannot stop carbon dioxide emissions perceptibly and will not make our country independent of OPEC imports. Automotive companies are critically dependent on the fickle and changing preferences of national and international markets.

Industrial companies that follow political hype will be punished sooner or later. Governments are incapable of designing automobiles for the market place. The world is relegated to using automobiles, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes for the next century and will have to power most of them with liquid transportation fuels. We may be able to use less of them, we will be able to reduce energy consumption, we can use other forms of energy for some transportation, and we can produce petroleum substitutes from biomass. We can even produce biomass without competing with critically important food crops.

In order to minimize fuel consumption quickly, the auto industry is forced to deal with performance features. American drivers cannot avoid covering much longer distances than European or Japanese drivers. American drivers have less access to public transportation, have larger families, and drive on different types of roads. Automotive companies must listen to their customers.

Toyota and Honda have been listening most successfully. American and foreign car companies have developed a wide range of comfortable cars with a wide variety of utilitarian and luxury features. Sportive cars and SUV’s are attracting large numbers of buyers. All cars offer a wide selection of comfort and entertainment features. One major car component has received only peripheral attention; it is the much maligned internal combustion engine.

Many modern internal combustion engines are marvels of engineering. Materials, manufacturing processes, and especially peripheral components have progressed to unprecedented levels of performance and longevity. There is a last frontier that has escaped deserved attention. This is the highly energy efficient combustion engine. This is the type of engine that the automotive engine needs to develop, this is the engine that legislators should make mandatory.

This is the engine that we need to use for at least one more century. Long term the automotive industry has to develop an entirely new, advanced, internal combustion engine! Average energy efficiency of the worlds inventory of combustion engines is somewhere in the lower mid-twenties. Energy efficiency cannot grow indefinitely. When approaching the 50% efficiency mark, it will be difficult and very expensive to increase efficiency by a single percent. Advanced automotive engines are operating in the mid-thirties.

Large stationary engines are breaking the 45% mark. Large engines on trains and ships are getting above 40%. Looking at the total world inventory, we may still have a chance to nearly double energy efficiency and to cut energy consumption of present inventory in half. We cannot reach this goal by legislating fuel consumption of cars only. We can achieve optimum energy efficiency only by reengineering the processes taking place within and around the internal combustion space.

We know that higher compression ratios will increase energy efficiency, we know how to produce high octane fuel, we know why Diesel engines are more efficient, we know how to minimize formation of pollutants. The automotive industry has developed a huge selection of sophisticated electronic components for single cylinder fuel injection, for precise controls of valve motion and ignition timing, and for reclaiming waste energy at the exhaust.

No company seems to have found the nerve to get a jump on the competition and develop the successor to the two more than century old engine concepts; the Otto and the Diesel engines. If the US government decides to extend a $25 billion loan to the automotive industry, it should attach a few conditions. The loan needs to be secured and must take precedent over shareholder equity. The loan should stipulate that the salaries of top management are tethered to salaries of other top CEO’s like that of the US President.

The obscene bonuses of yesterday should be paid only after a waiting period of at least five years; in which previously agreed upon management objectives must have been met or exceeded. We must stop the prevalent looting of cash from US manufacturing companies by unscrupulous investors. These investors do not contribute anything of lasting value. They are excessively rewarded for ruining once healthy companies. We cannot continue to let a selected few impoverish the many and ruin our country irreparably.