The research Centres associated with Environmental  Engineering are the Centre for Complex Fluids Processing and the Multidisciplinary Nanotechnology Centre. Students are given the opportunity to complete research projects within these centres, however there are opportunities to conduct research projects in any part of the School of Engineering. We highlight below some of the research that the Staff of the discipline are engaged in.
The Research Centres have extensive experimental and theoretical expertise and  are well endowed with state-of-the-art equipment. The Centres are especially expert in six areas which are readily applicable to the  industrial career of our graduates:

Waste Management

A phrase that you hear often from the staff of environmental engineering is there is no such thing as waste, and much of our research is focused on this belief. We are researching and developing processes that use raw materials that are often discarded from a process to produce valuable products. Thus we are interested in wastewater treatment landfill, aquaculture (fish farms) and recycling technologies.

Soil Properties

We have a research initiative with colleagues from Geography examining the physical and chemical properties of soils. We characterise soils from all over the world with the aim of improving the recovery of soils after drought and fire damage. Such damage often leads to poor water retention of the soils resulting in obvious problems for growing crops and feeding the local population.

Membrane separation processes

The removal of material from a process stream using synthetic membranes is an important operation within a environmental engineering context. Membrane separations are  the most important modern developments within Chemical and Biochemical engineering and we  are recognized as internationally leading exponents in the development of quantitative methods for the prediction of the industrial performance of such processes (microfiltration, ultrafiltration and nanofiltration). Markets include food, bioscience, environment and pharmaceuticals.

Bioprocess Engineering

The successful scale-up and exploitation of  developments in biotechnology depends of the effective operation of bioreactors and the efficient recovery and separation of the desired products. Such biological materials are extremely complex in composition and physical properties and their processing is a key feature of our work. Such processing is often an essential operation in efficient use of materials waste management and  energy generation through biomass production or anaerobic digestion.

Fluidics

Our  expertise in rheology and cavitation has been applied towards environmental management within  industry where understanding the fluid dynamics and flow properties of materials is essential if the processing is to be effective and efficient.

Nanotechnology, Surface and Particle Characterisation

Marine energy is a source of low-carbon renewable energy and the extensive British coastline, with its array of islands, provides the UK with one of the largest resources of marine energy in the world. The Welsh Assembly Government has set ambitious targets for producing electricity from marine-based technologies per year by 2030.  With no marine energy devices currently operating off the Welsh coast, the challenge is clear and significant.

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