Over the years, Embry-Riddle students and faculty alike have conducted various forms of research on wildfires, including using drone technology for tracking and prediction purposes, analyzing large-scale atmospheric events and their impact on fires and reviewing data to improve evacuation practices.
“When these items are being burned by wildfires, there is a whole new world of pollutants being released into the air that we don’t know much about,” said Dr. Marwa El-Sayed, assistant professor of Civil Engineering, as well as the director of the Sustainability and Environmental Engineering Lab (SEEL). El-Sayed, honored as one of only 17 global scientists to receive an exploratory research award from the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), will investigate micro- and nano-plastics released during biomass burning. Funded by the Biological and Environmental Research program, this year’s EMSL awards support research on aerosols, plastic pollution, methane emissions and global climate change. Her groundbreaking nine-month project will quantify plastic particles, examining their concentrations, size distributions and chemical compositions under different burning conditions. “Wildfires are a major issue in the U.S. and around the world,” said El-Sayed. “Air moves freely, so we are all impacted, and we need to know what we are inhaling.” The award grants access to EMSL’s innovative facilities at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington,
where El-Sayed will conduct at least six controlled biomass-burning experiments that will generate samples that will be meticulously analyzed. “There is a lot more we want to study, but we first have to investigate on a small scale what is being emitted, so we can better understand their behavior later on,” she said. El-Sayed’s research will provide insights into the emissions from homes affected by wildfires, controlled burns and plastic waste incineration processes as these pollutants have a lifetime in the atmosphere, and, in the atmosphere, they can undergo several chemical and physical process changes. She received an NSF Faculty Travel Grant to attend the American Geophysical Union annual meeting to speak about her work. Looking ahead, El-Sayed plans to publish her findings and is eager to build on her work through continued collaboration with EMSL. “Using the results of this exploratory study, we will be able to develop more focused questions to address in future studies,” she said. “I envision this as not just a one- time collaboration, but the start of a longer collaboration between Embry‑Riddle and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory.”
Wildfires are a major issue in the U.S. and around the world. Air moves freely, so we are all impacted, and we need to know what we are inhaling.” Dr. Marwa El-Sayed Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering Director, Sustainability and Environmental Engineering Lab
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online