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Projects Updates for place: Campus Instructional Facility

  1. Visualization of the impact of CIF geothermal

    Associated Project(s): 
    Geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility (CIF)
    Energy Dashboard Project

    “In summary, there will be 2 slides taking turns to be displayed on the digital screen in CIF. The first slide is primarily composed of the 3D GSHP system schematic (Ground loops, heat pump and building) and the key parameters & features. The second slide shows the results from building energy modeling, including annual outdoor temperature variations, heating/cooing loads and other energy consumptions. This may [help] visualize the impact of CIF geothermal and give public a better understanding on the renewable resources.”

    -John Zhao (11/14/2022)

    PhD. Candidate

    Research Assistant

    Agricultural & Biological Engineering

    Research field: Ground Source HVAC System/Subsurface Heat Transfer

    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

    Attached Files: 

  3. Geothermal @ CIF Inquiry

    Associated Project(s): 
    Geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility (CIF)

    John Zhao, PhD. Candidate, reached out to Dr. Stumpf with a question regarding the CIF's geothermal capacity. Specifically, the question was, "The description of this project https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project/geothermal-campus-instructional-facility-cif  says:'The optimized geothermal exchange system will supply the CIF building with approximately 135 tons of heating and cooling capacity, equivalent to almost 65% of the total building energy demand.' I am checking if the GSHP only covers the 65% of the building space conditioning, or the heating/cooling account for 65% of the total electricity consumption (considering lighting, and etc.)?"

    Dr Stumpf replied explaining that the 135 tons is 65% of the building's energy demand and the GSHPS (ground source heat pump) covers this portion. The GSHPS is primarily used to offset energy for making chilled water since the building is cooling dominated. The other 35% is for electricity (making hot water, running HVAC system, geothermal and water pumps, etc.)

    Zhao met with Eric Vetter (in charge of the CIF) and got the following heat pump capacity information:

    Manufacturer: ClimaCool Corporation

    Cooling Capacity: 141 Ton /  1,692 MBH

    Heating Capacity: 2,222 MBH

    Electricity Input: At full capacity rated 100.4 - 144.3 kW.

  6. Digital Sign for Recognition of SSC $375k Contribution

    Associated Project(s): 
    Geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility (CIF)
    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC)

    Part of the $25K fund 1‐304398, “602 SSC‐CIF Geothermal” for the CIF account is recognizing SSC’s $375K contribution to Geothermal in digital signage for a year at CIF.

     

    The final draft of the digital signage is attached below.

     

    Attached Files: 

  7. Update on CEE Project Based Learning Course

    Associated Project(s): 
    CEE Project Based Learning (PBL)
    Independent Student Projects

    The attached project list is being considered by the nearly 200 CEE first year students for the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Project Based Learning class this year. The project idea list had been formed over several years and was last updated on August 23, 2021.

    This year, the CEE project based learning course transitioned to a requirement for all incoming CEE students and a permanent part of the curriculum.  It has 188 students, meets 4-6 on Mondays and Wednesdays in 0035 CIF, and is still team-taught by CEE faculty with F&S assistance. There are also some online students and a mirrored course that Dr. Art Schmidt is teaching for a partner school in China via Zoom.

    Attached Files: 

  8. Archived Info - Previous Project Description

    Associated Project(s): 
    Outdoor Recycling Bin Update

    This project will improve the waste process around the outdoor campus areas and increase recycling participation. It will do this by increasing recycling bin visibility with improved bins and signage, co-locating waste and recycling bins, and improving the overall layout of waste and recycling bins on campus. There are currently 372 concrete trash bins on campus and an additional 60 made of other materials. Facilities & Services initially proposed to remove all 432 of the bins and to replace them with a total of 133 dual bins. Marya Ryan, an Academic Hourly at F&S working on Zero Waste projects, mapped the existing bins for the full University District and turned her maps over to the Purchasing, Waste, and Recycling (PWR) SWATeam for their recommendations on locations for dual bins. PWR SWATeam student member Fangxing Liu wrote an initial draft recommendation for the consolidation of dual bins outside. Additionally, one sample dual bin was installed by F&S Grounds at Altgeld Hall near Wright Street to test durability. In the fall of 2018, CEE students assessed additional bin locations throughout all areas of campus.

    During fall 2018, CEE students Junren Wang and Wen-Chi Chen worked on a project to clarify locations and review estimated costs. They mapped the future dual bin locations for the campus, with a total of 161 bins to install. The cost of the first pilot dual bin was about $4,000, so the initial estimate for all of them is about $625,000. The students recommended installing ten dual bins in various locations spread around campus. The student report was submitted with the Fall 2018 Semesterly Report to SSC.

    Morgan White and Brent Lewis met with F&S Grounds leadership, Superintendent Ryan Welch and Foreperson Isaac Williams, to initiate the installation. On June 18, 2019, Grounds ordered 30 bins for 15 dual bin locations, using the SSC funding. The material and shipping cost for the bins is $18,523.56. Installation materials and labor will be additional costs. Grounds will confirm the ten locations identified by the CEE students and select an additional five locations. Also, MCORE is installing dual bins at the new bus stops on Green Street with University funding. Additional bins are being installed outdoors during summer 2021 with the first being at the Northwest corner of E-14 and the North side of the Main Quad. Waste Management Intern Sydney Trimble will assist in the systemic updating and organization of the campus-wide rollout to take place this 2021 summer into the fall semester.

  9. Request for a Project Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Outdoor Recycling Bin Update

    From: Maloto, Avery (FandS)
    Sent: Wednesday, July 7, 2021 3:10 PM
    To: Trimble, Sydney (FandS)
    Cc: White, Morgan; Varney, Peter W
    Subject: [ACTION REQUESTED] Requesting Project Update: Outdoor Recycling Bin Update

    Hi, Sydney!

    I hope you are doing well. I’m reaching out regarding your project called 'Outdoor Recycling Bin Update.'

    Each year, we ask several project contacts to review their information on the iCAP Portal to ensure that we are providing accurate and up to date information for the public. Our goal is to keep the iCAP Portal updated in real-time, and we need your help.

    To make this process as easy as possible for you, I've created an 'iCAP Portal Content' document with your project information. All you need is to review and revise the existing information! Please open the links below and update as much information as possible, so I can put it on the iCAP Portal. You can also provide related images, files, websites, or videos to share. If you would like to get direct access to edit your project page on the iCAP Portal, please let us know.

    • Link to Outdoor Recycling Bin Update's iCAP Portal project
    page: https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project/outdoor-recycling-bin-u...

    • Link to the iCAP Portal Content Guideline for Outdoor Recycling Bin
    Update: https://uofi.box.com/s/y7r370o0ymq26w45ht0httqbn1zf45lq

    The iCAP Portal is maintained by sustainability advocates at iSEE and F&S and volunteers. We are also able to assist you with embedding iCAP Portal information on other websites you maintain. Last year we had over 17,000 visitors to the iCAP Portal, and many are university students who use this online data repository for classes and research projects. If you have any questions about the iCAP Portal, please email icap@lists.mste.illinois.edu.

    Please email me your revisions and any related files, per the links above, by July 9.

    Thank you in advance for your help!

    ~Avery

  12. News-Gazette article about CIF geothermal

    Associated Project(s): 
    Geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility (CIF)
    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC)
    Carbon Credit Purchasing Program (C2P2) with Second Nature
    Issue Press Releases and Sustainability Reports
    Illinois Geothermal Coalition

    The News-Gazette printed this story about the geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility: https://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/university-illinois/renewable-en...

     

    "URBANA — The University of Illinois’ glossy new building at Springfield Avenue and Wright Street represents the next step in its sustainability goals.

    The four-story, 122,000- square-foot, $75 million Campus Instructional Facility is also the biggest geothermal installation on the UI campus.

    Its geothermal system can pump 135 tons of hot or cool air into the building. That’s twice as much as the next biggest geothermal system on campus, and about 30 times the amount pumped into an average home.

    “The whole world knows about solar and wind power and things like that — hydroelectric power, too — but that’s only the electric side of energy. Energy also includes heating and cooling,” said Morgan White, director of sustainability at UI Facilities & Services. “It’s truly transformative, because it’s moving into the phase of getting us clean thermal energy and not just clean electricity.”

    Electricity provides heating and cooling as well, she said, but it’s primarily provided by natural gas, propane and other nonrenewable sources of energy.

    The key to the geothermal endeavor? Forty boreholes dug into the Bardeen Quad next to Grainger Library. They’re 20 feet apart, 6 inches wide and drilled 450 feet deep.

    Initially, the project required 60 boreholes, but UI researchers reduced that figure — and made the system financially feasible — by checking the thermal conductivity of different rock and soil layers, or the rate that heat passes through them, while considering the depth and flow rate of groundwater.

    To keep the building temperate year-round, a mixture of water and glycol circulates from a heat pump in the mechanical room into a pipe that runs up and down the underground field of boreholes.

    In winter, the pump pulls heat from the ground into the building. In summer, heat is pumped from the building back into the ground.

    “It’s like when you have a bathtub that’s a little too hot or a little too cold, and you pour some water in and stir it up,” White said.

    In all, the system reduces the building’s energy consumption by 65 percent compared to a typical heating/cooling installation, saving about $45,000 per year.

    Student initiatives helped fund the state-of-the-art thermal system. The 18-member Student Sustainability Committee, funded by the annual “Green Fee” assessed on students, allocated $375,000 — or about 13 percent of the system’s cost — to the facility’s geothermal installation.

    The building has a number of other unique features. It contains two dozen new classrooms — one of the highest figures on campus — replete with active-learning and distance-learning spaces. In the fall, engineering courses will occupy most of the space, along with math, statistics and other technical classes.

    The facility is also the first UI building funded through a public-private partnership, which allows for tax-exempt financing.

    Meanwhile, faculty and graduate students will use temperature information from a 385-foot-deep monitoring well, funded by Facilities & Services and the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment, for continued research opportunities. 

    As part of the Illinois Climate Action Plan, the university plans to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

    Currently, around 12 percent of electricity is provided by renewable sources, like the solar and wind farms near campus, White said. But only 4.5 percent of the UI’s total energy use, counting thermal, comes from renewable sources.

    “Clean electricity is important, but it’s not enough,” White said.

    In the planning stages, the UI wasn’t supposed to start implementing geothermal systems until 2035, but a suggestion by Yu-Feng Forrest Lin of the Prairie Research Institute jump-started that process."

  13. Iron Workers are rolling out the new bins

    Associated Project(s): 
    Outdoor Recycling Bin Update

    Todd from the ironworkers shop has begun rolling out the bins as planned / verified. We still need to go through the rest of campus to get him more locations to complete. As Shantanu Pai is still in Chicago, Sydney who is the newest zero waste intern at F&S can facilitate the documentation and communication with the trades. 

  15. New Innovative Classroom Space

    Associated Project(s): 
    Geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility (CIF)

    The Campus Instructional Facility is substantially completed and will be open and ready for use in the fall semester. The new building at the southeast corner of Springfield Avenue and Wright Street offers state-of-theart spaces, including classrooms in the round and a “test kitchen” for instructional innovation, as well as cuttingedge technology, including smart glass technology to control incoming light and the largest geothermal energy system implemented so far at the university. Dr. Mohamed Attalla and others from F&S recently toured the new 122,000 square foot building that was constructed under the public-private partnership financing model. Aiming to inspire innovations and promote teamwork, the building will initially host engineering, math, and statistics classes; student career fairs; hack-a-thons; and other collaborations.

  17. Radio interview about geothermal and clean energy

    Associated Project(s): 
    Illinois Geothermal Coalition
    Geothermal Urbana-Champaign
    Geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility (CIF)
    Use Clean Power
    Use Clean Thermal Energy

    Morgan White with Facilities and Services, Sustainability, spoke with Stevie Jay and Diane Ducey on May 10, 2021 on ESPN radio 93.5. They discussed the new Campus Instructional Facility geothermal system, other clean energy projects on campus, and the local Geothermal Urbana-Champaign program.  

  19. Podcast: Morgan White Speaks About Solar & Geothermal

    Associated Project(s): 
    Geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility (CIF)
    Illinois Geothermal Coalition
    Geothermal Urbana-Champaign

    On May 10, 2021, Morgan White joined Stevie Jay Broadcasting to talk about renewable energy in the Champaign-Urbana community. In this 7 minute podcast, Morgan spoke about solar and geothermal energy initiatives by F&S and beyond!

    Listen to the podcast in the attached files!

    Attached Files: 

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