Mark Fitch

Assistant Chair and Associate Professor ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

Ph.D., chemical engineering, University of Texas at Austin

Scholarly Focus, Teaching or Research Areas

Constructed wetlands/biochemical reactors for metals removal, biofiltration/membrane biofiltration, nutrient uptake in streams

Honors or Awards

• UM System President’s Award for University Citizenship –Service, 2019

Selected Academic Activities or Research Projects

• Nonpoint Source Pollution Mitigation in an Urban Watershed: Examining floating treatment wetlands to mitigate nutrient pollution in urban watersheds with application to eutrophic urban ponds. The project is determining uptake by various native plants and by algae in floating treatment wetlands, where aquatic vegetation is suspended in the water column of streams and lakes to take up nutrients with plant growth.

• Biochemical Reactors for treatment of mine-impacted water: Passive bioreactors generate sulfide as wood is degraded, and that sulfide reacts with metals to form precipitates. The lifespan of such reactors is practically unknown and change in precipitation efficiency over time is entirely unknown. This long-term project involves operating thirty small reactors and evaluating performance and extent of wood decay over a decade.

Selected Publications and Presentations

Locmelis, M., Clark, S., Lueking, A., Moats, M., Awuah-Offei, K., Alagha, L., Fitch, M., & Krolikowski, A. (2022): Summary Report: 2nd Annual Workshop on Resilient Supply of Critical Minerals, 4-5 August 2022, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, Missouri, USA, 27 pages.

Deef-Allah, E., Abdelrahman, M., Fitch, M., Ragab, M., Bose, M., He, X., “Balancing the Performance and Environmental Concerns of Used Motor Oil as Rejuvenator in Asphalt Mixes,” Recycling, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 11, 2019, DOI: 10.3390/ recycling4010011.

Sochacki, A., Yadav, A.K., Srivastava, P., Kumar, N., Fitch, M., Mohanty A., “Constructed Wetlands for Metals: Removal Mechanism and Analytical Challenges,” Chapter 11 in Constructed Wetlands for Industrial Wastewater Treatment, Alexandros Stefanakis (Ede.), John Wiley & Sons, 2018, ISBN 978-1-119-26834-5.