Morgan Johnston and Chenxi Jiang have requested a meeting with Dave Boehm and other Building Maintenance representatives to discuss the options for implementing a new water conservation strategy for stand-alone building rooftop cooling towers.
We set COC = 5 for pilot studies.
Director of iSEE, Evan DeLucia, summarized three recommendations presented at the March 2017 Sustainability Council meeting: EGen005 Rooftop Solar Standard, EGen003 Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) Timeline, and ECons003 Conservation Budget, as well as the next steps, for Chancellor Jones’ approval.
We followed up with the Sustainability Council on April 25, 2017, with the attached file.
See Transmittal of EGen005 Rooftop Solar Standards here.
See iWG Assessment for SWATeam recommendation EGen005 Rooftop Solar Standard here.
See SWATeam recommendation EGen005 Rooftop Solar Standards here.
See Transmittal of EGen003 PPA term to the Sustainability Council here.
See iWG Assessment of EGen003 PPA Term here.
See SWATeam recommendation EGen003 PPA Term here.
See Transmittal of ECONS003 Conservation Budget to the Provost Office
See iWG Assessment of ECONS003 Conservation Budget
ee SWATeam Recommendation of ECONS003 Conservation Budget
The EGEN SWATeam held another bi-weekly meeting. Topics covered include:
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.
|
COC |
BLOWDOWN |
TOTAL USAGE (Makeup) |
||
|
Gallons |
Percent |
Gallons |
Percent |
|
|
1.5 |
10,000 |
100% |
15,000 |
100% |
|
2 |
5000 |
50% |
10,000 |
66% |
|
3 |
2500 |
25% |
7500 |
50% |
|
4 |
1667 |
17% |
6667 |
44% |
|
5 |
1250 |
13% |
6250 |
42% |
|
6 |
1000 |
10% |
6000 |
40% |
|
7 |
833 |
8% |
5833 |
39% |
|
8 |
714 |
7% |
5714 |
38% |
|
Note: Evaporation = 5000 Gallons |
||||
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.
|
COC |
BLOWDOWN |
TOTAL USAGE (Makeup) |
||
|
Gallons |
Percent |
Gallons |
Percent |
|
|
1.5 |
10,000 |
100% |
15,000 |
100% |
|
5 |
1250 |
13% |
6250 |
42% |
|
10 |
555 |
6% |
5550 |
37% |
|
25 |
208 |
2% |
5208 |
35% |
|
50 |
102 |
1% |
5102 |
34% |
|
75 |
66 |
0.7% |
5066 |
34% |
|
100 |
51 |
0.5% |
5051 |
34% |
|
200 |
25 |
0.3% |
5025 |
34% |
|
Note: Evaporation = 5000 Gallons |
||||
"
Updates on BIF Greywater Meter application. Discussion on Cooling Tower COC and "Zero" blowdown systems.
The iCAP Working Group met and discussed the following agenda items. Meeting notes are attached.
1. Brief iCAP Portal overview by Morgan
2. Discuss any updates to Water002, Cooling Tower Increase COC
3. Discuss Trans008, Bike Parking in Ramps
4. Discuss updates to Econs004, Green Labs Coordinator
5. Consider issues with recommendation process and view recommendation tracker
Following the completion of iWG assessment, the SWATeam recommendation EGen005 Rooftop Solar Standards was transmitted to the Sustainability Council on March 6, 2017.
See iWG Assessment for SWATeam recommendation EGen005 Rooftop Solar Standard here.
See SWATeam recommendation EGen005 Rooftop Solar Standards here.
The iCAP Working Group (iWG) met on February 23, 2017, to discuss the SWATeam recommendation EGen005 Rooftop Solar Standards. The official recommendation from the iWG was:
"Rooftop solar should be included in the Facility Standards, with guidance developed by F&S staff, in order to maximize the effectiveness of solar installations. This should apply to new construction, major renovations, and roof improvement projects. Project scopes should include rooftop solar, as applicable, based on the guidance to be developed according to roof orientation, nearby shading, potential solar capacity, and roof construction type (e.g., gypsum would be an inappropriate roof decking for retrofitting with solar PVs). Exceptions should require a variance during the capital design review process."
See attached the assessment form complete with official comments from all the iWG members.
See SWATeam recommendation EGen005 Rooftop Solar Standards here.
see file
see file
The eGen SWATeam submitted a recommendation to the iWG stating, "Incorporate a building design standard into the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Facilities Standards that requires all new buildings on-campus to include a rooftop solar array covering the majority of rooftop surface area."
See attached the SWATeam recommendation EGen005 Rooftop Solar Standards complete with comments from all the eGen SWATeam members.
Review of pending recommendations: BIF Greywater, Increase Cooling Tower COC, Design Center Greywater Piping. Discussion on possible edits to the SWAT/iWG process. Student members will submit proposal to Student Sustainability Commision for apermanent meter to measure BIF greywater use. The Water SWATeam will meet every other week and will have a joint meeting with the Agriculture, Land Use, Food, and Sequestration (ALUFS) SWATeam this semester.
The EGEN SWATeam held their first meeting for the Spring 2017 semester. Topics covered include:
The EGEN SWATeam held their final meeting for the Fall 2016 semester. Topics covered include:
The past couple weeks have been productive and busy. Follow up emails were sent to those people who filled out our enrollment form but did not reply back after the initial email and already some good responses have come of that. A couple people said they misunderstood and didn't realize that their department would have to purchase the bicycles so they said they weren't interested. A couple said they received the info and were talking to the appropriate people within their departments. A couple others had meetings setup with myself due to the follow up emails.
This week I met with Illini Emergency Medical Services who have a bicycle fleet that they use during University events to ensure rapid medical response times. We discussed what was going well for them and what could be improved. They said they would like more publicity so I said that they should absolutely try and get the word out more about their efforts.
This week I also met with the Student Planning Organization, the RSO that manages Urban Planning department bicycle fleet. They have 3 bikes that I got to see. We discussed the potential of encouraging more faculty and visiting people's use of the bikes as well as branding for their bikes in an attempt to differentiate them from private bikes.
I have also been working on an infographic on "Why Bikes" that details the benefits of cycling on campus. I am hoping this can be passed around with other bicycle fleet documentation we send out. There are a couple drafts still and they are attached to this update as a private file.
The EGEN SWATeam held their fourth meeting for the Fall 2016 semester. Topics covered include:
After receiving responses from four different active bicycle fleets on campus after about 3 weeks of having our survey active, we wrote up an analysis of the responses. This analysis is attached to this post as a .pdf file.
This past week we continued reaching out to people that we have either met in person about potentially starting bicycle fleets on campus. Doug Wolters, Director of Operations for ACES, was able to reach out to the business managers of ACES to share information that we sent him. I also sent emails to a couple people that took our survey requesting a short meeting so we can further discuss their program's success as well as any ways we can improve their bicycle fleets.
Here is an update of what Lily Wilcock and myself (Logan Ebeling) have accomplished concerning departmental bicycle fleets on campus from late August to late October.
We began with a goal of assessing the health and status of current departmental bicycle fleets on campus. Offhand, Lily knew of the following programs:
In an attempt to reach out to those programs and other ones that we potentially did not know about, we developed a survey for people involved with those programs to take. A link to that survey was sent out in an E-Week advertisement on October 2nd. A screenshot of that blurb in the E-Week is attached to this post. We are still waiting on responses from that survey (so far we have about 3 responses).
Another goal was to advertise to departments that starting a bicycle fleet was even a possibility. Anecdotally, it seems that many people are unaware that the University is encouraging bicycle use for employees. To address this, we developed a short enrollment form that people could fill out if they wanted more information on starting a departmental bicycle fleet. A link to this enrollment form was also sent out in the October 2nd E-Week advertisement. We had around 10 replies to this enrollment form and sent out an email to the respondents with more information and an offer to meet and discuss possibilities for a bicycle fleet for their department.
One goal of mine was to develop two checklists to have available to people to aid in sending out information to people. These two checklists are completed and we have been sending them out to people where appropriate. The two checklists are attached to this post and they are:
These checklists drew heavily off of information in the Departmental Bike Sharing Manual from 2014 (attached to this project's main page).
