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

This project was originally proposed by Mechanical Engineering students for Abbott Power Plant in spring 2016.  At that time, the SSC members did not want to support solar on the co-generation power plant because it uses fossil fuels.  They asked if we could use it on a different campus roof, and we considered all the large or medium campus roofs.

The SSC asked us to identify a building that could have solar added, so I reached out to Applied Health Sciences in 2016 for approval to use the Speech and Hearing Sciences Building.  Since that time, Kristine Chalifoux confirmed that the roof is strong enough for solar panels, due to a previous change in the insulation materials.  Brian Finet completed design drawings for installing solar on the full available roof, and the Architecture Review Committee confirmed the building is allowed to have solar added.  

After the engineering design work, the remaining funds were about $35K.  This fall, we received a construction estimate from Jeff Holt for upgrading the electrical system to handle a 70 kW solar PV array.  It would cost about $42K if done in conjunction with your capital project, just to get the wiring up to the roof and ready to punch through and install panels later.  Rather than ask the SSC for additional funding and an extension, I am returning the remaining dollars and putting this project on indefinite hold. 

The overall campus goals for on-campus solar generation are listed in the 2015 Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP), which will be updated for 2020.  The current objective is to generate 25,000 MWh/year of on-campus solar, and we are currently at about 7,000 MWh/year.  Per the direction received from Chancellor Jones, we are working on a second large-scale solar farm to meet the goal, rather than several smaller-scale projects. 

The second solar farm is planned to be about 12,000 kW in name-plate capacity, significantly more than the 70 kW rooftop array for Speech and Hearing.  Rooftop solar is still an option, and several departments continue to install them at the building scale. The design drawings are posted online through the iCAP Portal, at https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project/speech-and-hearing-rooftop-solar-pvs, for future use.

The goal of this project was to support installation of high density bike parking in an area of campus with high needs for additional bike racks, and provide an amenity for campus cyclists with a unique shelter structure protecting parked bikes from the winter elements at the Main Library.  This funding purchased the bike shelter and high-density racks.  The shelter will be installed at the Main Library, after completion of the MCORE construction work on Wright Street and Armory Avenue.

The most significant development to date is that two buildings have been identified in which the material the team is work with will be installed, one is a single-story building of approximately 400 sq/ft the other has a double height space and a footprint off approximately 1,600 sq/ft that will be enclosed using the material in development.

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

The new team member of ALUFS was told a summary of goals from the previous semester. A plan was made regarding work on iCAP goal revision for the spring semester. In addition to the original purpose of additional tree cover along the Embarras River, other consideraions were made.

Zero waste coordination semesterly report submitted to the Student Sustainability Committee.

On March 1, 2018, Morgan White, Pete Varney, and Shawn Patterson met with capital planner Trent Beane, a representative of the engineering firm, and a manufacturer’s rep from Dehart Recycling.  We discussed the project needs, and the current status of the WTS equipment.  Some notable points are listed below:

• The existing baler was installed in 1996
• Design of balers has changes a lot, with lower labor costs and alternatives to the perforator currently used at WTS.
• The power supply is probably similar to the existing power demand.

After the meeting, the engineering firm was asked to provide a formal proposal to F&S to approve and begin the design work.  Unfortunately, this process was delayed due to emergency family medical issues for Mr. Beane. 

In August 2018, a new planner was assigned, Chris Anzelmo. Anzelmo finalized the agreement with the engineering firm and arranged a kick-off meeting.  In November 2018, the engineer visited the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) to examine the Styrofoam densifier and gathered additional information from the WTS.

Then on December 13, 2018, preliminary drawings were shared with F&S. At that meeting, discussions included the needs for modifying the “pit” at the base of the baler entry system, adjusting the pathway width between the baler and the north wall, and recognition that locating the Styrofoam densifier at the WTS would require a building addition. Information about the HVAC system and required code updates were also reviewed.

On January 2, 2019, a baler vendor representative met with us at the WTS. They are going to look at an alternative baler that could provide the needed walkway space on the north end and use the existing pit.

On January 22nd, 2019 the eGen SWATeam had their first meeting of the Spring '19 semester.

The mode share survey email went out this afternoon.

Hi Pete and Shawn—

There was no activity on the zero-waste front this past week.

Best regards,

Marya Ryan

SSC convened on January 21th to discuss the upcoming spring semester.