On February 17th, the Land & Water iCAP team met to discuss the details of a permeable pavers recommendation. The team then split off into breakout rooms to organize future soil and water committee initiatives.
Meeting minutes are attached.
Good Evening All,
There was a short hiatus of meetings as the semester was coming to an end due to conflict of schedules but we were able to meet today. Even though we did not meet I was still finishing and touching up the items we planned last meeting. I was able to finalize the water audit program and it is attached. I then came up with some water sustainability goals the University of Illinois should pursue. Lastly I was able to water a page on why water scarcity is an important issue that we as a university should took more interest in even though it may seem we have no issues here. The Mahomet aquifer is the body of water most of central Illinois uses and each area has a limit of usage before it starts depleting. Once it starts to deplete there some irreversible consequences. The aquifer’s head has already lowered by 50 feet since 1950 and with the growing demand from the university this issue should not be looked past. This combined with the data collection and analysis excel files will mark the end of my time working on this project.
It has been a pleasure working on this water inventory ICAP goal and helping out other areas of the campus more to more water sustainable practices. The past semester has been a great learning experience for me and cannot wait to see how the school continues to progress towards a more sustainable future. Thank you for keeping up with my progress! Austin Jung signing off.
Best Regards,
Austin Jung
Good Afternoon All,
This week’s meeting was productive and we were able to set up the excel spreadsheets needed to record data on the chiller plants, Abbott, and potable water. Over the past week I researched and created a checklist and table for conducting a water audit. The checklist will be shared here after some final corrections are made to it. I was able to determine what was needed and where stamped flow volumes are marked on each fixture. If there is no stamp on faucets there is a simple tool called a flow rate bag that will be purchased so auditors can determine the flow manually. As for urinals and lavatories the model and serial number will be recorded to search the model manually and figure out the flow rate. There is no hand tool to determine these flow rates.
The spreadsheets will be given to Mike Marquissee so his team can collect the data we need faster. Once the data is collected some analysis of it will be done to help us determine efficiencies and water consumption of the different facilities. Also it will help us figure out if we have line losses in our systems.
The next steps to be done this week is to get these excel spreadsheets to Mike and give him some time to gather all of the data we need. Analyze the raw data and compare the values to industry and national standards. This will allow us to figure out where we stand in our water consumption. Finish editing the water audit checklist and add snap shots of where the stamps can be located so it will be easier for auditors to know where to look. The water audit program we are creating right now will mainly be used for bathrooms and kitchens in university buildings. Research laboratories and student laboratories will be done by another team and program in the works.
Thank You,
Austin Jung
Good afternoon all,
This week’s meeting was short but was necessary to update Morgan on the progress made over the past three weeks and to determine the next steps to be taken. To catch everyone up I have attached all of my findings for information on the chilled water loops. A quick summary of what I discovered is that the vet med chiller plant is on a separate loop because of how far it is from other campus buildings. In its loop it has 5 different buildings it provides chilled water to. The other 6 chiller plants are all connected in the main chilled water loop. The loop consists of about 115 different campus buildings and they can be seen in the document. The buildings found in this loop were found by sorting the utilities billing information by chilled water vendor. The five chiller plants on the main loop also have the capability to isolate themselves from the main loop and provide certain buildings with chilled water. This list can also be found in the document.
I then read through the BIF’s plumbing materials list to see if it had any information on low flow fixtures. I found out that for some of the listed items like the lavatories in the description says “max flow 0.5 GPM in compliance with energy policy act of 1992 and ASME/ANSI standard A112.18.1M.” We do not know if it has all the listed fixtures and will have to continue looking into other building plumbing lists.
Besides researching I also created a rough water audit plan for campus buildings. This will be a very intensive process as most water audits need to test every water fixture to get the actual flow rates of them. The first part of the audit will be reviewing data on each building to see the history of water consumption. Next the billing and metered water will be compared to see if there is a loss of water. After the data collection and comparison is complete auditors will walk through the building to see if there are any visible leaks and test each water fixtures actual flow rate. The flow rate will be recorded and used to compare each building against each other to see which will but retro fitted first based on most water consumption.
For this upcoming week I will be researching and creating more questions to ask about the chiller plants and low flow water fixtures. We will try to plan meetings or phone calls with other knowledgeable people to see if they have information that can help our progress and clarify any questions we have. I will also be creating a checklist that can be given to interns or workers on how to perform the walk through part of the water audit and finding vendors that can sell us the tools needed to determine flow rates of different water fixture.
Thank You,
Austin Jung
Good afternoon all,
This week’s meeting went well and we were able to discover more information on the low-flow water fixtures installed in some of the university buildings. I was also able to update the excel sheet, to the correct display for when we get data. At the beginning of the meeting, I was able to catch the group up on the information I read in the Master Utilities Plan and Combined Heat and Power (CHP) convention. The CHP convention had very general information on CHP generation and some specifics in areas we are not interested in. There was not much information on how water consumption is monitored or improving.
The Master Utilities Plan was very informative on how Abbot Power Plant and the Chiller plants work. It gave good background information and the condition they are in. It also provided suggestions on how to bring them back up to operational standards.
During the meeting, we called Mark Warner, and asked him for more information on the low-flow water fixture installations. We were not able to gain an active list of updated buildings, but were able to learn some other information. We learned that Guy Grant was in charge of the program, and we will contact him in the following weeks. We also found out there were some complaints about the low-flow fixtures which led to the removal of some of these fixtures. For example, some of the sinks are not providing enough hot water. Another contact we will be reaching is the Refrigeration Foreman to learn more about the chiller plants.
For the following meeting, I will continue my research on chiller plants and generate a list of questions about the projects to ask Kent Reifsteck, the Director of Utilities at F&S. I will also be using data on chilled water billing for each university building to figure out which buildings are in the chilled water loop. The low-flow water fixture project has been updated to involve which buildings have had them removed.
Thanks,
Austin Jung
Good afternoon all,
There was no week 4 update because of some time conflicts which lead to the cancelation of the meeting. This week proceeded normally and we recapped what happened for week 4 and continued progress forward on determining what data is needed for the chiller plants to determine their efficiencies and line losses. To keep everyone up to date last week I was able to email three different combined heat and power plants, they were in London, Helsinki, and Copenhagen. They either did not get back to me or told me to review what is on their site because no further information can be released. After reviewing all of their sites, I was still not able to find more information on water consumption of CHPs or how it is monitored. I also emailed Ashlynn Stillwell who is a professor here at UIUC and has done research on water consumption. She was able to give me some helpful sources to find industry standards on energy, fuel, and water consumption of all power plants.
In this week’s meeting we reviewed the excel spread sheet I created to determine what data would need to be collected for our analysis of the chiller plants. We came to the conclusion that the water makeup (potable water) for each chiller plant, total Water Chilled at each chiller plant, energy used at each chiller plant, and total chilled water metered from buildings in the loop. With this data the cooling and energy efficiencies can be determined along with the line losses.
For next week’s meeting we will be trying to figure out who to contact to determine which buildings have been retro fitted with the new low flow water fixtures and which have not yet. I will also be continuing my research on CHPs and reading into the master utilities plan. After reviewing the excel sheet I am going to make some edits to prepare it for when get our data. Thanks for keeping up and I will be back next week.
Best,
Austin Jung
Good morning,
Week 3’s meeting was a very informative and productive with the help of Mike, who is the director of budgeting and resource planning for the energy services division. Mike was able to help confirm and teach us about what is exactly happening at the chiller plants. He caught us up to date on what is being metered and where to find certain information. Together we brainstormed ideas on how we can determine a metric to measure the water consumption of each chiller plant. This included the metered water going into the cooling tower, water going into the chiller loop, and comparing that number to the total chilled water produced. Alongside this comparison the BTUs will also be monitored to see how much energy is being used to produce all of this.
There are a couple of tasks that I will be getting done for week 4’s meeting. These include and not limited to:
This week was successful and looking forward to the information that will be collected in the following weeks. The attached document is some notes on UIUC cooling towers, Abbott, chiller plants, CHP plants, and our meeting.
Thank you,
Austin Jung
Good morning all,
Austin here and yesterday’s meeting with Morgan White and Sarthak Prasad went well. I reviewed articles on how power plants use freshwater and the ways to reduce their consumption. The biggest factor in water use at power plants is their cooling system. The metric for measuring this is gallon per KWh and it’s categorized by their withdrawal, consumption, and discharge. The different types of cooling systems have their own pros and cons. For example wet recirculating cooling is good because it doesn’t withdrawal a lot of water but it consumes more than the other methods. Then an example of an advanced cooling system is a hybrid system that used air and a cooling tower to combine the advantages of a cooling tower and the resourcefulness of using a dry system. The draw backs of using only air is it makes the thermal conversion efficiency go down and increases operational costs. More details can be found in the attached file.
We proceeded to continue research on how our power plant and chiller plants operate by looking at the water and energy consumption of the billing logs. We plan on meeting with Mike next week to gain more insight on the chiller plants and their water consumption. Then we looked at the piping layouts for the Universities potable and cooling water pipelines.
To further our research I will finish reviewing some more articles on cooling tower water consumption. Then find articles with more detail on how cogeneration plants work and what metrics are used to measure their energy and water consumption. There should be more data on this from different European studies because they have similar systems like ours at Abbott. Lastly I will familiarize myself with our systems by researching the chiller plants and Abbott information given on the Facility & Services webpage.
Thanks,
Austin Jung
Good evening everyone,
My name is Austin Jung and I am a senior in chemical engineering with a minor in the iSEE Fellows Program. I will be helping Morgan White and Sarthak Prasad with the 2015 iCAP objective #5.3 water audits for my SEE Fellow’s senior capstone. After the first successful meeting, the following will be addressed through the semester:
These will be the main objectives focused on during the capstone and any changes will be stated in one of the following weekly updates. I am excited to do my part and begin my investigations.
Thanks,
Austin Jung
Morgan White, Austin Jung, and Sarthak Prasad met today to discuss Austin's SEE Fellow senior capstone project. He will work on water audits for campus, in support of the 2015 iCAP objective #5.3. This is a continuation of efforts started under Professor Rabin Bhattarai and Lucas Slavicek.
Meeting topics included potential for the team to move forward with a water audit of campus buildings, ways that nitrogen runoff could be monitored, and incentives the Parking Department would have in following through with adding green infrastructure to parking projects.
Each team shared ideas of the semester and came together to propose a few joint recommendations. Suggested logistics for a water audit were mentioned, as well as nitrate runoff data from the 1990s that would be used as benchmark levels for runoff reduction. Different possible measuring techniques regarding future progress in nitrate reduction were mentioned. Ideas for greener parking lots were introduced, including replanting of trees on Lot E14.
Topics of discussion included the planned water audit and parking lots that could be used for studies related to stormwater runoff. A student in the Sustainability minor planned to work with Rabin Bhattarai on the audit. The EPA Rainworks Project would have potential to redesign Parking Lot F4 because Burnsides Laboratory will be torn down.
The team reviewed projects from 2016-17 and discussed potential student projects to carry out the objectives to inventory landscape performance, investigate water quality impacts of stormwater runoff, and performing a water audit.
Updates and discussion of greywater meter, greywater design standards, cooling tower cycles of concentration, water use dashboard, and student outreach.
