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Fred G. Heineken
Division Director
(Acting)

Environmental Engineering and Technology (EET)

This program supports research with the goal of applying engineering principles to reduce adverse effects of solid, liquid, and gaseous discharges into land, fresh and ocean waters and air that result from human activity and impair the value of those resources in the context of ecological tenets.  It also supports research on innovative biological, chemical, and physical processes used alone or as components of engineered systems to restore the usefulness of polluted land, water, and air resources.

The program emphasizes engineering principles underlying pollution avoidance as well as pollution treatment and remediation.  Research for improved sensors, innovative production processes, waste reduction and recycling, and industrial ecology are important to this program. Research may be directed toward improving the cost effectiveness of pollution avoidance as well as developing new principles for pollution avoidance technologies.

Research supported by the program must become an important component in the education and development of students, possibly across many academic levels, for the environmental workforce of the future.

Current research areas include:

• Engineering systems and methodologies that support the tenets of industrial ecology so that industrial systems make most efficient use of energy and materials resources while minimizing unwanted environmental impacts.  

• Technology for minimizing or avoiding point source and non-point source pollution. This includes recovery, recycling, and reuse technology as well as systems for containment of pollutants. 

• Integrated assessment models for understanding anthropogenically-stressed environmental systems.  

• Engineering goals for environmental cyberinfrastructure for data and information technology used in engineering modeling, analysis and visualization. 

• Models which address problems such as recycling, material recovery, disassembly, remanufacturing, life-cycle analysis and pollution prevention. 

• Application of modern analytical methodologies for process control and elucidation of process kinetics. 

• Sensors and instrumentation to monitor environmental processes and contaminants for control and feedback.  

• Advanced oxidation technologies such as ozonation, radiation, photolysis, nonthermal plasmas, ionizing radiation, electrohydraulic cavitation, sonolysis, and supercritical oxidation for destruction of environmental contaminants. 

• Engineering issues regarding management of residues derived from processing of water and wastes.

Review Procedures and Target Dates. 

All proposals must be prepared in accordance with instructions contained in the NSF Grant Proposal Guide (NSF 04-23) and must be submitted electronically via FastLane by October 29, 2004. This will be the only target date for EET FY'05 unsolicited proposals.

All proposals are reviewed according to the merit review criteria, described in the NSF Grant Proposal Guide.

Reviews are conducted by a combination of panels and ad-hoc reviews with no deadlines for unsolicited proposals.   

Investigators may be interested in a program announcement for research in Technology for a Sustainable Environment sponsored jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency and the NSF.
 

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Last updated:
11-Aug-2004