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  2. SSC funds Energy Shaft at the Energy Farm

    Associated Project(s): 
    Geothermal on Campus
    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC)

    This student-led project will involve the design, construction, and installation of an energy geo-structure for heating the UIUC Energy Farm, located near the southeast corner of Race Street and Curtis Road on the South Farms. This project has great potential in exploring and utilizing geothermal energy, a renewable energy alternative to fossil fuels. An energy shaft is a new technology designed to access the shallow geothermal energy (relatively constant ground temperature in the upper 30 m of the subsurface). The objective of the project is to determine the feasibility of using drilled shafts that are already being used to support structures on campus also as a geothermal heat-exchange element. Geothermal heat exchangers (closed absorber pipes) can be incorporated into underground infrastructure, e.g., drilled shafts, through which water is circulated to withdraw shallow geothermal heat (~55 °F) and transport it to the surface for structure heating or cooling.

    Attached Files: 

  4. SSC funds Red Oak Rain Garden Sidewalks

    Associated Project(s): 
    Red Oak Rain Garden
    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC)

    Located just south of Allen Hall/LAR and west of McKinley Health Center, the Red Oak Rain Garden solves local flooding issues while providing an outdoor space for the UIUC community. This SSC grant provides support for sidewalk modifications and additions, expanding pedestrian and cyclist transportation while strengthening flood control. The project team will also install benches to encourage community members to use the space throughout the year. For outreach, the project team will host a ribbon cutting event that celebrates the upgraded rain garden. Similarly, individuals can follow the rain garden @RainGardenUIUC on all social media platforms. 

    Attached Files: 

  7. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, This past week I interviewed another student worker and had a training with a couple others. Built bikes, test rode bikes, organized bikes, too.

    I pulled a bunch of bad wheels out of the back of the shop and had volunteers scrap those. Also had volunteers/staff overhaul wheels for future builds/sales. The idea is that once we get busy, having a used wheel that’s ready to go on a bike will hopefully significantly cut down on stand time for both patrons and shop builds.

    This week is Agora Days. Phillip, from the Bike Project/Uni will bring some University High School students over to the Bike Center Tuesday – Friday from 11am – 1pm and we’ll teach some bike skills! Should be a good time! 
    Numbers:

    Visitors: 49
    Sales: $114.32

    Memberships: 1 for $30
    Tires/tubes: 5 for $21

     

    Thanks!

    • Jake Benjamin
      Campus Bike Center Manager

  8. Weekly Updates for Zero Waste

    Associated Project(s): 
    Achieve Zero Waste

    Hi Pete and Shawn--

    Zero waste activities for the past week were

    • A phone call with Morgan, Shantanu Pai, Sara Portillo of Kimberly-Clark, and me to discuss the Division of Research Safety's concerns about lab participation in the glove recycling program. Sara shared information about Kimberly-Clark's handling of safety concerns on other campuses. Morgan and I will discuss the situation with the PWR SWATeam.
    • I updated the iCAP portal glove recycling page and the related program information flier.

    Best regards,
    Marya Ryan

  9. Week 3 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    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:

    • Creating a list of resources needed to be collected to determine the efficiency of the chiller plants and how much water/energy they consume
    • Email other combine heat and power and chiller plants to see how they track or measure their water consumption
    • Email Ashlynn Stillwill to see if she knows any good places to look for national and industry averages and standards
    • Look into BIF’s grey water meter to determine how much water could be saved if grey water system was enabled

    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

    Attached Files: 

  10. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, As one student staffer pointed out, we got a taste of summer last week. We had a few swells of genuine busyness. Odd for this time of year—but very welcome!

    I had a training session last week with a new hire and will have an interview today and another training on Friday this week. I made some progress on the shop builds that the students have been building. I’ll tackle some more of the wheel pile this week in addition to working through the builds.

    I am working with my student staff to get Friday Rides revived in time for spring/summer. Student staff will also lead a Fix-a-Flat class in partnership with F&S Sustainability. More updates on both next week as I work through logistics and planning for each of those events.

     

    Thanks!

     

    Visitors: 54

    Sales: $384

    Memberships: 3 for $90
    Bikes (refurb): 1 for $200

     

    Jake Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Manager

  11. Weekly Update for Zero Waste

    Associated Project(s): 
    Achieve Zero Waste

     

    Hi Pete and Shawn—

    Zero waste activity this week was catching up on emails. Morgan OKed my proposed updates to the glove recycling page of the iCAP portal (and the PDF flier with parallel content). I had intended to make the updates yesterday but fell ill. I’m better this morning, so I’ll plan to get them wrapped up early this evening.

    Best regards,
    Marya Ryan

  12. Week 2 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    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

    Attached Files: 

  13. Meeting Minutes for iWG February, 2019

    Associated Project(s): 
    iCAP Working Group (iWG)
    Student Sustainability Leadership Council (SSLC)
    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC)
    Energy Generation, Purchasing, & Distribution (eGen) SWATeam
    Energy Generation, Purchasing, & Distribution (eGen) SWATeam
    Agriculture, Land Use, Food, and Sequestration (ALUFS) SWATeam
    Zero Waste Recommendations Summary
    Solar Farm 2.0
    Internal price on carbon [ARCHIVED]
    Reduce Emissions from Transportation

    These are the meeting minutes from February 7, 2019.

    Attached Files: 

  14. Carbon Credit Funding Approval for Energy Piles at Hydro-Systems Lab

    Associated Project(s): 
    Hydro-Systems Lab Energy Foundations
    Utilize Carbon Credits
    Carbon Credit Purchasing Program (C2P2) with Second Nature

    $230,000 of funding from the Carbon Credit Sales Fund was approved for Energy Piles at Hydro-Systems Lab by Evan DeLucia and Mohamed Attalla

     

    Purpose of Project:

    "This project will install 8 energy piles in the foundation of the Hydro-Systems Lab on campus, and provide new research capabilities and a geothermal exchange system for reduction of energy demand from that building." -Morgan White (2/6/19)

     

    An email of the approval is linked below.

    Attached Files: 

  16. 18F Semesterly Report - Beginning bike maintenance classes

    Associated Project(s): 
    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC)
    Campus Bike Center

     

    Simon taught 15 sessions with around 100 attendants total, over the 15 weeks. The sessions were Mondays from at 6:30. The sessions began on 9/5/2017 and concluded at the end of the fall semester.

     

    The manager of the Campus Bike Center, Jake Benjamin, will help us seek another qualified student to teach the class this spring.

     

    Attached Files: 

  18. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, This past week was an uneventful one. We closed on Wednesday due to the cold and the rest of the week wasn’t much better. Had a meeting with Morgan and Sarthak on Monday about Sustainability with regards to CBC.

    This mini heat wave we’re experiencing might help visitor numbers this week.

    At worst, I’ll be able to make some inroads on the backlog of safety checks. And along those lines: as useful as the safety checklist has been the student workers are still failing it on the regular. This week I’ll run through the checklist again with the staff for a refresher.

    On Tuesday a guy came in looking for a couple broken frames for a non-bicycle related project. I was surprised and kind of happy to notice we didn’t have any junker frames left in the shop. Just about everything in here is buildable. I will spend some time this week culling the wheels we have.

     

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 33
    Sales: $436.01


    Thanks!

    Jake Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Manager

  20. RightCycle End of Year 2018 metrics

    Associated Project(s): 
    Glove Recycling

    Hello Shantanu,

    Congratulations on your outstanding waste diversion accomplishments in 2018!  By participating in the RIGHTCYCLE* Program, University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign has diverted 10,086 pounds of glove waste from landfills. Thank you for your commitment to corporate social responsibility and your continued efforts to reduce your impact on the environment.

    9/12/2018

    University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign

    RC4016

    Gloves

     

    8/27/2018

    University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign

    RC3983

    Gloves

    9515

    10/1/2018

    University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign

    RC4226

    Gloves

    71

    1/17/2018

    University of Illinois Urbana- Chemistry

    RC3362

    Gloves

    500

    Please remember to email rightcycle@kcc.com to request a release number prior to shipping your waste and to clearly display this number on your shipment.

    It all adds up to zero landfill and a more efficient workplace. 

     

    Thank you,

    Erika

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