Catholic Mission

 

 

The Department of Environmental Science & Engineering is involved in a number of projects around Erie and Presque Isle. Research activities being planned or underway include:

• Bioenergy from organic waste: For several years now, the conversion of organic waste material to biohydrogen has been studied.  Systems have been engineered to generate biogas containing hydrogen using sugar-rich wastewater.  Planned future work includes the mass culture of algae as a feedstock for biohydrogen production and the use of fermentation byproducts as a feedstock for the production of hydrogen by photosynthetic bacteria.
• Watershed modeling for the prediction of coliform bacterial levels in the nearshore waters of Lake Erie
• Aquatic ecosystem modeling of Presque Isle Bay
• Seiche behavior of the waters of Presque Isle Bay and implications for water quality
• Environmental quality of Lake Erie streams

In addition, the department received funding from the Growing Greener program of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to conduct a habitat and physico-chemical assessment of a number of streams flowing into Lake Erie along the Pennsylvania shoreline to compliment the previous study of the Presque Isle Bay watershed.

We also were awarded a grant from the Great Lakes Commission to quantify the extent and characterize the transport of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to the Presque Isle Bay and Lake Erie.