FRS 002 — Sec. 004 — (2 units) — CRN 73048 — T 5:10-7:00pm — 1011 EU III
The Recovery of Energy from Waste Materials

Instructor: Masoud Kayhanian, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering

Description: Each year significant quantities of municipal solid waste (MSW), agricultural wastes and biomass are disposed to the environment. MSW are generally disposed to the sanitary landfills and most agricultural wastes are spread onto the open land with minimum treatment. Large volume of biomass is also burned annually within the agricultural field. These practices have known to impact our groundwater, surface water and air quality. To prevent these environmental problems, the raw waste can be converted to energy in waste-to-energy facilities. Given the uncertainties concerning the future availability, production costs, and market prices for conventional fuels and inherent environmental problems associated with disposal of organic wastes, any potential source of alternate energy deserves serious consideration. This course is intended to provide an introduction to various methods that organic waste materials can be converted to source of energy for the production of electric power. The course is organized so that the students can gain the basic knowledge on topics such as: (1) type of wastes can be converted into energy, (2) fraction of waste that can be transformed into energy, (3) technologies that can be used to convert waste into energy, (4) form of energy produced (e.g., gas, liquid or both), (5) production of electricity from energy source, and (6) assessing the environmental benefits.

Format: The course will consist of (1) informal lectures involving student participations and their interactions, (2) video presentation of various energy recovery systems and (3) student presentations. Several reports, journal articles on energy related topics will be made available to students. The students will be divided into five groups and each group will be responsible to select a relevant topic and prepare a PowerPoint presentation at the conclusion of the course. Grading: students will be assigned a letter grade based on: (1) regular class participation and interaction (20%), (2) preparing a short critique of the regular reading assignments and (40%) and (3) the quality of final in class power point presentation (40%).

About the Instructor: Dr. Kayhanian has been a research faculty at UC Davis for the past 15 years. He is currently an associate research professor and acting as the associate director of the Center for Environmental and Water Resources Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Most of his current research activities related to the fate and transport of non-point source pollutants from transportation facilities. Prior to his current research activity Dr. Kayhanian acted as the director of the UC Davis High-Solids Bio-gasification project where he performed over 15 major research projects on energy related topics. He acted as the scientific committee member for the California Energy Commission and The California Integrated Waste Management Board for five years.