The Wind PPA vendor has provided the Feb 2017 Buyer's Share report to Prairieland Energy Inc. (PEI).  This represents the actual wind power purchased, received, and used on the Urbana campus through the agreement with EDP Renewables (EDPR).

Parking Department facility manager, Mike Wise, shared the following information.  "I will be submitting the resurfacing project for lot F4 as a FY19 Project in June/July of 2018. Then an Architect will be selected and design begins. Bidding and Construction will follow. Ideas can start now though so that we can vet them and include a finalized Program with the project request."

Good morning, Tracy—

Here is what I’ve been up to this past week:

• Morgan and I met with Nick Osborne at the Wounded Vets’ Center last Tuesday to discuss glass recycling. I have a call in to Matt Snyder at CRI and will call him again to get costs, pickup schedules and other information we’ll need to get glass recycling set up at Wounded Vets and about a dozen other locations where it is needed to meet our LEED certification requirements.
• I attended the PWR SWATeam meeting last Wednesday and followed up by putting Meghan Killinger in touch with Ryan Welch and Brent Lewis on an effort to learn the waste pick-up routes on campus. They have also requested information on the status of composting, which I will provide in the coming few days.
• I have email in to Ryan and Brent to clarify what is needed by way of mapping waste bins around campus for the Dual Bin project.
• Jordan Powers from Fisher Scientific has been in touch with me. We are arranging a meeting to include Tanya Lisowski in the coming week or two.
• Morgan and I met for a couple of hours so that she could give me the history of waste reduction and diversion efforts related to glass, styrofoam, compostables and the anaerobic digester, gloves, and batteries.
• I signed up to get information from CURC. I got my F&S badge from Traice Quinn.

Best regards,

Marya Ryan

Zero Waste Coordinator

Updates and discussion of greywater meter, greywater design standards, cooling tower cycles of concentration, water use dashboard, and student outreach. 

Below is information provided by Jeremy Overmann, B.S. Ch. E., Water Treatment Specialist, on the water use and cycles of concentration (COC) in a cooling tower, as requested after a Land and Water SWAT meeting. 

"

Water SWAT members,

Here is some more information regarding the cooling tower discussion at today’s meeting.

This first graph shows how much water a typical 100 ton Cooling Tower uses per hour, and how this changes when the tower is operated at various Cycles of Concentration (COC)

NOTE:  a 1 ton cooling tower can remove 15,000 BTU/hr of heat.

Most standard chemically treated Cooling Towers use unsoftened water and operate between 4 – 6 COC, depending on the source water quality (also called Make-Up water) and the efficacy of the chemical treatment program.

As COC increases, the potential for formation of calcium scale (and possibly other types of scale) increases.  Scale deposits reduce the energy efficiency of the chiller and the cooling tower, and result in the need for labor intensive cleaning to remove the scale.

The following table shows the relationship between volume of Cooling Tower blowdown (bleed), blowdown rate (% bleed), COC, and total water usage.

Cycles of Concentration is controlled by choosing the rate of blowdown.  This is done by controlling the blowdown (bleed) valve at the bottom of the tower.

In a “Zero” blowdown cooling tower, softened water is used, and cycles of concentration ranges from 20 – 100 or higher.  To achieve proper water chemistry to provide corrosion protection, usually need to operate at > 20 COC. 

During the Champaign Regional Office Building study, the highest COC achieved was 51.  The blowdown valve is turned off, however some water is lost from leaks in the tower, and from droplets of water that escape with the air that is drawn through the tower.

"