Sustainability and Environmental Engineering Laboratory

Environmental contaminants can profoundly affect air quality, ecosystems, climate, human health and the sustainability of the communities in which we live. The SEELab brings together environmental engineering, aerospace, atmospheric science and emerging technologies to better understand these impacts and develop innovative solutions for a changing world.

SEEL’s mission is to identify, characterize and understand environmental contaminants, their sources, transport, transformation and impacts across Earth’s environmental systems. Through experimental research, field measurements, data analytics, modeling and emerging artificial intelligence technologies, we translate environmental observations into actionable knowledge and strategies for reducing and mitigating environmental impacts.

We investigate emissions generated by the technologies that enable modern transportation and space exploration, from aircraft and airports to rocket launches and emerging aerospace systems, including: aircraft emissions, airport emissions and air quality, rocket launch emissions, aerospace sustainability, atmospheric monitoring, and artificial intelligence and predictive modeling. As humanity prepares for sustained exploration of the Moon and, eventually, Mars, new environmental engineering challenges emerge.

Our research interests include lunar and planetary dust, particulate transport, environmental sensing and the interaction between aerospace operations and extraterrestrial environments. SEELab is engineering the future of environmental sustainability—from Earth to the Moon and beyond.

Equipment

• M5310 Portable Total Organic Carbon analyzer (Suez)
• Total carbon analyzer, TCA-08 (Magee Scientific)
• Carbon monoxide analyzer (Ecotech)
• Nitrogen oxides analyzer (Ecotech)
• Sulfur oxides analyzers (Ecotech)
• Particle-Into-Liquid-Sampler (PILS) (Brechtel Manufacturing Inc.)
• Axioscope 7 Microscope (Ziess)
• High-volume atmospheric sampler (Tisch Environmental)
• Various VOC sensors
• Vacuum Oven
• pH meter
• Digital balance
• DryCal flowmeter (Mesa Labs)
• Sulfur dioxide analyzer (Ecotech)
• DustTrack DRX Desktop (TSI Inc)
• Various low-cost air quality sensors:
• Purple Air
• AirU Pro (TELLUS Inc.)
• Alphasense OPC-N3
• Vaisala AQT 420