By educating and training engineering students in environmental technology-related courses, we can ensure they acquire the knowledge and skills needed to address present and future environmental challenges. Serious games have the potential to revolutionize engineering education by offering an engaging and effective way to learn, while fostering environmental awareness. Hence, this communication presents a general card game model that can be applied to the treatment of liquid effluents, gaseous emissions, solid waste, or soils, for students to associate pollution with effects, with the necessary treatments, and with the conditions surrounding it. The general rules are described below.

At the beginning of any of these games, the deck is shuffled, and each player (student) receives three cards. Players may draw new cards only at the end of their turn, never at the beginning, and always to maintain their hand size at three cards. On each turn, the player may perform only one of the following actions:
(i) play an asset card (such as soil, stream, city, etc.) in front of them;
(ii) attach a treatment card to one of their asset cards;
(iii) attach a contaminant card to another player’s asset card;
(iv) discard 1, 2, or 3 cards to draw 1, 2, or 3 new cards, respectively;
(v) play a weather card, which will be automatically discarded.

Asset cards played in front of players may be discarded if the number of contaminant cards attached to them is high enough. Discarding an asset card always involves discarding all attached cards, including contaminants and treatments.

Treatment cards selectively neutralize specific contaminant cards. This is defined in the text of each treatment card and forms the core of the learning process. For example, if both the contaminant POLYCYCLIC AROMATICS and the treatment SURFACTANT are attached to a certain soil, they are automatically discarded together.
To win, players must collect a certain number of different asset cards and ensure they are free of contaminants. The presence of any contaminant prevents a player from winning, even if the affected asset card is otherwise protected. If the deck runs out of cards, the discard pile is shuffled and used instead.

These card games are intended to be played in person and by groups of 4 – 6 students. These games, which have been tested in class since 2021, have consistently received positive feedback. While they are not intended for detailed engineering of environmental treatments, they greatly help students associate key concepts. As a drawback, the game becomes difficult to win with more than six players, making it challenging to meet the victory conditions within a reasonable time frame.

Teachers and educators are encouraged to try these games so that students can associate pollution and remediation technology, serving as a good starting point before diving into the details.

Keywords: Engineering chemistry, Gamification, Innovation.