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Projects Updates for key objective: No name

  3. Weekly Updates for Zero Waste

    Associated Project(s): 
    Achieve Zero Waste
    Styrecycle: Expanded polystyrene (EPS) recycling program [ARCHIVED]

    Hi Pete and Shawn--

    This week's zero waste activities were

    • Email to put David Akins of the School of Art and Design in touch with Morgan to move forward with relocating the EPS densifier to Art and Design. She will coordinate with him, Joe Pickowitz, and BK Sharma to set up a time for Mr. Akins to see the densifier.
    • Emailed Julija Sakutyte of the PWR SWATeam to get me, Morgan, and Sara Portillo of Kimberly-Clark on an upcoming PWR SWATeam agenda to discuss the glove recycling program. Currently, it looks like it could be May before everyone's schedules align.

    Best regards,

    Marya Ryan

  4. Week 7-9 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    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

    Attached Files: 

  6. Weekly Updates for Zero Waste

    Associated Project(s): 
    Achieve Zero Waste

    Hi Pete and Shawn—

    Zero waste activities this past week were that I heard back from the School of Art and Design, which may be interested in acquiring the EPS densifier. I have an email out to Morgan, Pete, and Joe Pickowitz to identify the right person for Art and Design to work with on a possible transfer.

    I also reviewed further PWR-SWATeam comments on the waste-reduction goals for iCAP Objective 6.1.

    Best regards,

    Marya Ryan

  7. Second Nature Payment to UIUC

    Associated Project(s): 
    Carbon Credit Purchasing Program (C2P2) with Second Nature

    Second Nature paid UIUC for the sale of vintage 2017 carbon credits to Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) as part of UIUC's participation in the Carbon Credit and Purchasing Program.

    Second Nature transferred 2,865 vintage Carbon Credits (VCUs) to BP Target Neutral (BPTN) on behalf of UIUC.

    For this sale, UIUC receives $6.25 per credit. The total amount paid to UIUC for this sale is $17,906.25

     

    An email of confirmation of this payment is attached below.

     

    Attached Files: 

  9. Week 6 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    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

    Attached Files: 

  14. Week 4 & 5 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    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

    Attached Files: 

  15. Weekly Updates for Zero Waste

    Associated Project(s): 
    Achieve Zero Waste
    Styrecycle: Expanded polystyrene (EPS) recycling program [ARCHIVED]

    Hi Pete and Shawn—

    Zero waste activity for the past week was an exchange of emails with Fab Lab to see if they could make use of the EPS densifier. They appreciated the offer but declined it for lack of space. They suggested Arch Annex1 may have use for it, and Morgan has also given me other suggestions, which I plan to pursue this week.

    Best regards

    Marya Ryan

  18. 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

  19. 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: 

  20. 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

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