Ben Leu is currently a ph.D candidate in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He got his Bachelor's and Master's Degree of Forestry Department in National Taiwan University (NTU) in 1993 and 1999, respectively. While a student of Forestry Department, he studied the physical and chemical processes for wood products. It is his working experience forged him determination to pursue another Degree in Environmental Engineering. In 2001, he participated in two river renovation projects funded by Taiwan Environmental Protection Agency. Now in UCLA, his academic advisor is Prof. M. K. Stenstrom. His research focus on process control of municipal wastewater treatment...

Research Topics

Ben's expertise is in water/wastewater treatment, and his academic research focus on four main topics: 1) using bioaugmentation to degrade hazardous wastes in wastewater, 2) developing energy conservation strategies for wastewater aeration, 3) improving nutrient removal by process control, and 4) evaluating membrane or ceramic fine-pore aerators. The tools of his research include mathematical modeling, as well as field- and lab- experiments for water quality analysis. His works have been presented in two major water/wastewater-related conferences, the WefTec and IWA , and journal papers are being published in research journals Water Environmental Research and Water Research, as followed or see more:

•  Kaliman, A, Rosso, D., Leu, S.-Y. , and Stenstrom, M.K., 2008, Fine-pore aeration diffusers: Accelerated membrane ageing studies , Wat. Research , 42 , pp 467-475.
•  Leu, S.-Y. , Babcock, R., Tzeng, C.-J., and Stenstrom, M.K., 2008, Modeling the Performance of Hazardous Wastes Removal in Bioaugmented Activated Sludge Processes , Wat. Environ. Research, (in review)
•  Leu, S.-Y. Rosso, D., Larson, L., and Stenstrom, M.K., 2009, Real-Time Monitoring Aeration Efficiency in the Activated Sludge Process and Methods to Reduce Energy Consumption , Wat. Environ. Research, (submitted)
•  Leu, S.-Y. and Stenstrom, M.K., 2009 , Quantification and Evaluation of Nitrogen Removal in Bioaugment ation Processes , Wat. Environ. Research , (in preparation)
•  Leu, S.-Y. , Babcock, J., Libra, and Stenstrom, M.K., 2009 , Monitoring the real-time nitrogen removal performance in activated sludge processes by off-gas tes t , Wat. Research , (in preparation)

Participated Projects

Ben participated in several projects and perform field tests in several wastewater treatment plants. In the latest project sponsored by Southern California Edison Inc., Ben work with Prof. Stenstrom's group and developed an automatic real-time monitoring instrument to evaluate the aeration energy consumption. See more...

Course Works

•  Water/Wastewater Treatment: Aquatic chemistry; design and unit operations of water/wastewater treatment; advanced biological processes of wastewater treatment; physics of environmental transport.
•  Hydrology and Water Resources: Surface/ground water hydrology; engineering economic analysis; mathematical models for water management; hydrologic data assimilation.
•  Lab/computer applications: Environmental microbiology and biotechnology; wood chemistry; fire-resistant processing of wood-products; environmental chemistry laboratory; advanced geographic information systems (GIS).