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Projects Updates for key objective: No name

  4. 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: 

  5. 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

  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 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

  11. 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: 

  12. 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 [ARCHIVED]
    Energy Generation, Purchasing, & Distribution (eGen) SWATeam [ARCHIVED]
    Agriculture, Land Use, Food, and Sequestration (ALUFS) SWATeam [ARCHIVED]
    Solar Farm 2.0
    Internal price on carbon [ARCHIVED]
    Reduce Emissions from Transportation

    These are the meeting minutes from February 7, 2019.

    Attached Files: 

  13. 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. archived info - previous project description

    Associated Project(s): 
    Sustainability iCAP Portal

    Sustainability is: Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

    The Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) outlines a path for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to achieve carbon neutrality as soon as possible, and no later than 2050. The campus committed to this ambitious goal when in 2008 it signed the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) — later to be renamed the Second Nature Carbon Commitment for its emphasis on emissions.

    In 2016, Illinois took on an even greater leadership role when Interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson signed its sister pledge, the Second Nature Resilience Commitment, which charges campus to examine the vulnerabilities of its landscapes and infrastructure in the face of an already changed climate. Together, these two commitments form Second Nature’s comprehensive Climate Commitment. As a charter signatory of the Climate Commitment, Illinois continues its dedication to being on the forefront of sustainable future planning.

    This site is a repository for summary information about each iCAP project, both to share the information publicly and to assist in collecting information for reporting purposes. These projects are organized into ten themes: Education, Energy, Funding, Land & Space, Outreach, Procurement & Waste, Reporting Progress, Research, Transportation, and Water.

    The Objectives page is a dashboard of 2015 iCAP metrics. Each Project page provides details and background information. The Map page can be filtered by associated theme. If you would like to recommend a new project or are aware of an existing project that is not listed on this site, please use the “Suggestions” tab to let us know.

    Read the approved 2015 Illinois Climate Action Plan.

  17. Week 1 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    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:

    • Create a water audit program/process for an existing building that will be the basis for the campus wide water audit.
    • Quantify and reduce the distribution and line losses for steam by measuring the steam/condensate loss. Then compare this to the national and peer averages.
    • Develop a list of buildings that have and need to have their water fixtures upgraded.
    • Find out a metric to measure the water consumption of our power plant and water cooling plants to develop a way to record this data for further analysis.
    • Continue support to help F&S meet their water consumption goals.

    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

     

    Attached Files: 

  19. Weekly Updates for Zero Waste

    Associated Project(s): 
    Achieve Zero Waste

    Hi Pete and Shawn,

    Zero waste activity for the past week is as follows:

    • I am arranging a conference call with Morgan and the Kimberly-Clark representative to discuss the glove recycling program. I am seeing if Shantanu Pai can join us.
    • I have an email out to Morgan to approve proposed changes to the iCAP portal glove recycling page to reflect the program changes that took effect Dec. 31.

    Best regards,

    Marya Ryan

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