Waste Water Treatment Is An Art, Not Science!
Posted by Labels: Art, Engineering, Science, Waste WaterApartmentadda.com has been kind enough to label me as a “Water Expert”. I prefer to call myself an Environmental Engineer with a “Work In Progress” tag.
In the late 1970’s I had the good fortune to study a little bit of Environmental Engineering under the legendary Wesley Eckenfelder Jr., then Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt University, and author of many of the early textbooks on Wastewater Treatment : A man of great good humour and breezy insouciance and always great company in his customary colourful plaid sports coat at the communal coffee pot in the Department.
Many of the tables and graphs in his early textbooks were lacking in essential numbers, units, dimensions etc., in the columns, and along the X-Y coordinates, to which his lighthearted riposte was “ Wastewater Treatment is an Art, not Science.”
In my practice as a Consulting Engineer in later years, I have had the misfortune to scrutinize on several occasions design calculations and computations submitted by aspiring, overzealous environmental engineers, possibly with a Master’s degree or higher from Indian Universities : Calculations running into pages and pages, containing obscure equations and muddled arithmetic, finally ending up with totally absurd numbers for answers. Verily these worthies have missed the wood for the trees.
Clearly, thirty years on, Eckenfelder’s maxim of Wastewater Treatment being an Art holds true to this day.
Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal April 15, 2011
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