Thomas Kaisen

Designing a Wastewater Treatment System

For engineering students at JMU, it is a requirement to have a capstone project. The capstone project takes place during your junior and senior years in the department. It is a student led project with a faculty member as an advisor. Students and faculty have the opportunity to propose projects. Students go through and interview process and are assigned to a project based on the interest of their interviews. Currently, I am working with a five-student team to design a wastewater treatment system for Northumberland County, Virginia.

Northumberland County is located along the Chesapeake Bay, which has high nutrient concentrations in the water. These nutrients are mainly entering the Bay through stormwater runoff and septic tank effluent. We are currently characterizing Northumberland County’s service area of wastewater treatment from maps and county contacts. This will determine the amount of nutrients entering the Bay from septic tank effluent. Next we will determine the amount of nutrients entering the Bay from runoff based on known concentrations and land maps of Northumberland County.