| Ecosystem | (Environmental Engineering) An organism or group of organisms and their surroundings. The boundary of an ecosystem may be arbitrarily chosen to suit the area of interest or study. |
| Effluent based standards | (Environmental Engineering) Standards which set concentration or mass per time limits on the effluent being discharged to a receiving water. |
| Electronegativity | (Environmental Engineering) The potential of an atom to attract electrons when the atom is bonded in a compound. The scale is 0 to 4 with 0 being the most electropositive (low attraction) and 4 being the most electronegative (high attraction). |
| Electrostatic precipitator | (Environmental Engineering) A device which uses an electric field to trap particulate pollutants. |
| Elementary reaction | (Environmental Engineering) A reaction in which the rate expression corresponds to the stoichiometric equation. |
| Epilimnion | (Environmental Engineering) The top layer of a lake. |
| Equivalent | (Environmental Engineering) The mass of the compound which will produce one mole of available reacting substance. Thus, for an acid, this would be the mass of acid which will produce one mole of H+, for a base, one mole of OH-. |
| Ethers | (Environmental Engineering) An organic compound which has two hydrocarbon groups bound by an interior oxygen atom. The general formula is R'-O-R". |
| Eucaryotic organisms | (Environmental Engineering) Organisms which possess a nuclear membrane. This includes all known organisms except viruses and bacteria. |
| Facultative | (Environmental Engineering) A group of microorganisms which prefer or preferentially use molecular oxygen when available, but are capable of suing other pathways for energy and synthesis if molecular oxygen is not available. |