Morgan White and Sinead Soltis met with Katherine Yoshida, the University of Illinois-Chicago's Sustainabiliy program director about our system's status of being an EPA SmartWay Affiliate. Discussion included the history of SmartWay on our campus, along with ideas of how to integrate into UIC's campus. 

A follow up call is scheduled for the end of October. 

FGI Webinar: US EPA Reconsideration of Coal Combustion Residual Regulation

This webinar will discuss a series of proposed & finalized amendments to rules promulgated by the US EPA to the Coal Combustion Residuals Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Rule.  This presentation will summarize the analysis from EPA’s Composite Model for Leachate Migration with Transformation Products and contextualize that output with the USWAG Decision and the 2020 Rulemaking efforts.

October 8, 11 am–12 pm • Map

Jen Miller • Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

The Youth Climate Justice Forum presents this podcast series in which we will be trying to find ways for all of us to continue to work for climate justice during and after the coronavirus crisis. This week, Kaia and Theo interview Courtney Kwong, the Recycling Coordinator at U-Cycle, about waste management, COVID-19, and the difference Urbana’s community has already made on the environment.

https://youthclimateforum.wixsite.com/summit/podcast/episode/221f2e53/th...

Lauren Kumle, Tess Sobol, Jaboc Heglund, and Tommy Robey in CEE 493 - Sustainable Design Engineering Technology worked with Dr. Andy Stumpf in Fall 2020 on a Deep Direct Use (DDU) geothermal proposal for north campus.

Dr. Stumpf provided this information to the team in September:

If your team is interested, you might consider a different technology for geothermal energy at Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory. Specifically a deep direct-use (DDU) geothermal energy system (GES). I suggest this because I am not certain there is enough ground space at Newmark for a geothermal borefield like at CIF. The advantages of DDU GES is it requires fewer wells, and there would be enough thermal energy extracted to condition space in multiple buildings. Essentially, the DDU GES comprises extraction and injection wells (likely 2 of each needed) to access geothermal fluids (brine) from deeper bedrock formations. Under campus, one of the potential bedrock formations, the St. Peter Sandstone, lies at ~2,000 feet depth and contains an abundant amount of fluid at 78-82°F. When I last talked to Professor Liang Liu (who recently retired from College of Engineering), he was very interested in a study for DDU GES for the Engineering quad (south of Grainger library). So I think your findings from this type of system would be timely and more likely to be implemented.

My colleagues and I just completed a feasibility study of DDU GES for six agricultural research facilities on the South Farms (see summary paper attached).

The focus was on the deeper Mt. Simon Sandstone (lying at >6000 feet depth) because we were interested in extracting the hottest brine (110-130°F) since some of the farms needed to make hot water. They are not connected to the steam and hot/cold water energy system servicing the main part of campus, so propane and natural gas are the primary fuels. However, the St. Peter Sandstone would be an alternative… and this formation is also being considered for cooling buildings.

If you are interested in looking at DDU for the Newmark site, I can share the report with you. It should contain much of the information you need. Some of colleagues can help you with the life cycle costs and mechanical energy system analyses. Completing this project would also help researchers on campus compete for funding from DOE to complete tests wells which will be needed to validate your findings. DOE is very interested in developing DDU GES in non-volcanic areas of the US, especially for district-energy systems. Cornell University just received funding from DOE for a test well to develop a DDU GES on their campus, but they will most likely have to drill >15,000 feet into the Precambrian granite develop the system. They are looking to generate electricity with very hot water. https://eos.org/science-updates/exploring-by-boring-geothermal-wells-as-research-tools.

Doing a rough calculation, I think constructing a DDU GES would be of similar cost to a shallow borefield with 50-100 wells. The DDU GES would be much more efficient since you are directly using the heated brine and not trying to conduct heat in the ground. The payback period would be much quicker since it will be servicing more than one building.

 On 9/25/2020, Lauren, Tommy, and Jacob met with Dr. Stumpf.  He provided the following update:

I had a meeting with Lauren Jacob and Tommy today about their design project. I suggested they look at a DDU system that would heat/cool 4 buildings (Newmark, DCL, Uni High, and Siebel Center). I guess the number of buildings will depend on the amount of energy that can be extracted from the geothermal reservoir. I also suggested they look at the shallowest reservoir, the St. Peter Sandstone. As part of their analysis, they indicated there is a need for building level energy use data.

F&S staff met with the researchers to discuss the design constraints for installing the tensengrity structure for bike parking at Newmark Civil Engineering Lab (NCEL).  Dr. Ann Scychterz and Dr. Nishant Garg at CEE met with Stacey DeLorenzo, Brent, Lewis, Sarthak Prasad, and Morgan White from F&S on 9/22/2020. We discussed a few design constraints, such as staying out of the tree lines and height requirements for the proposed structure.  We also discussed the potential lifetime of the structure, various design shape options that may be incorporated, material selections, and maintenance plans.  The faculty will contact F&S again in early December.

Campus Safety Study: Focus Group for Vision Zero (UIUC)

As part of Vision Zero study, a survey was sent out to collect data about problematic locations within campus. To collect further data and gain insights, we are conducting a focus group. Please fill out this form if you are interested in attending the focus group. The focus group would be held over zoom and would be an hour long. The link to the zoom meeting will be sent in a later email. 

Jacob Mathew • Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

 This opportunity is available online.

7 projects were approved during the FY2020 Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) project selection. At this time, final scoring results were determined as well. F&S will be beginning these projects soon and will start assessing their correlated utility savings.

Due to COVID-19, the voting process was conducted via email as opposed to meeting in person. As a result of the success in the virtual voting process, future selections are planned to occur in a similar fashion.

Julie Wurth, iSEE Communications Specialist, released an article highlighting the preservation of century-old trees during the construction of the new Siebel Center for Design. These trees are rooted in the university's early history and serve as "remnants of a windbreak that protected a vast experimental orchard planted there in the late 19th century by botanist Thomas Jonathan Burrill, a pioneer in plant pathology and the third University of Illinois President (1891-94)."

Read the article as a PDF in the attachments or proceed to its posting in iSEE's News Releases!

The Crochet Coral Reef: Intersections of Math, Science and Art

Margaret Wertheim is a writer, artist and curator whose work brings together art, math and science as evidenced in her Crochet Coral Reef, created through hyperbolic crochet. This talk launches the Urbana-Champaign Satellite Reef, Part of the worldwide Crochet Coral Reef project by Christine and Margaret Wertheim. Visit the project website https://uiucsatellitecrochetcoralreef.wordpress.com/

September 17, 5:30 pm • Map

Jennifer Bergmark • School of Art and Design