Environmental Engineering Commons^™

The Living Breakwaters Pdr Efforts Econcrete Resource Analysis, Guianina Ferrari, Shervon Stephens, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy impacted 443,000 people and caused nearly $19 billion (about $58 per person in the US) worth of damage within New York City. As part of the New York City infrastructure reparation plan, the Living Breakwaters project in Tottenville addressed coastal resilience, allocating $100M of public funds to a series of artificial breakwaters by the southwest coast of Staten Island. Each breakwater is constructed and designed to mitigate water flow in storm events. ECOncrete, a primary element of the breakwater, is a specialty cast cementitious product that is marine organism-friendly that encourages biocalcification and photosynthesis. …

Investigation Of Mechanical Properties Of Recycled Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites Reinforcing Cement, Caleb Mull, Fnu Archie, Harry Lee, Guyuan Zhang

Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship

The usage of fiber-reinforced polymer composites in various fields has increased significantly due to their advantageous physical and mechanical properties. However, the sustainability of composite parts has not been fully solved for a long time. Most end-of-life (EOL) composite parts have been landfilled without recycling due to the recycling cost and lack of application of recycled composites. Mechanical composite recycling that shred the EOL composite part and reuse it for downgraded applications is one of the most commonly used recycling processes for the EOL composite part. In this research, mechanical composite recycling process was demonstrated for the construction application. The …

Multi-Objective Optimization Of A Microgrid For An Islanded Community, Roozbeh Ghasemi, Martin Wosnik, Weiwei Mo

Student Research Projects

Microgrid design for islanded communities is seeing renewed interest due to the increased accessibility of solar, wind, and energy storage technologies. Islanded communities are often economically disadvantaged, which requires cost-effective microgrid designs. This paper investigates the potential to achieve economic and environmental benefits via optimizing the sizing of various components of a renewable energy system. We used Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island, Maine, USA as a testbed for developing an optimization framework. A system dynamics (SD) model was first developed to simulate the daily operation of the island microgrid system and then the model was calibrated and validated using …

Household Preferences Of Decentralized Solar Photovoltaic And Thermal Systems, Roozbeh Ghasemi, Yue Li, Zhongming Lu, Ju-Chin Huang, Weiwei Mo

Student Research Projects

Small-scale, residential solar systems have been increasingly recognized as a key sector of future solar capacity growth and carbon emission reduction in cities. This study investigated customer preferences of solar thermal and photovoltaic (PV) systems to facilitate their broader residential penetration. A discrete choice experiment was designed and administered through Amazon Mechanical Turk targeting two testbeds: Boston, Massachusetts and Atlanta, Georgia. Six system features were investigated, including system type, ownership, upfront cost, annual savings, environmental benefits, and neighbor’s choices. The collected data were then analyzed using latent class choice modeling to identify the hidden classes of unique preference characteristics and …

The Living Breakwaters Pdr Efforts: Conceptual Scheduling, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused nearly $19 billion in damages in New York City including 69,000 residential units across the five boroughs. This disaster precipitated a post-disaster-rebuilding (PDR) project including roughly $4.2 billion in a Community Development Block Grant allocated towards PDR projects. A portion of the grant was used to construct a living breakwater in Tottenville, Staten Island, consisting of a resiliency approach to risk reduction through erosion prevention, wave energy attenuation, and enhancement of ecosystems and social resiliency to improve resistance to storms for the community of Tottenville. The ridges of each breakwater are designed with …

Preventing Transmission Of Covid 19 In Hvac Duct Systems: Implementations Of Hvac System Design Upgrade, Jacob S. Lopez, Adama Barro

Publications and Research

The recent pandemic outbreak has triggered a global alarm to increase efforts on finding the best methods to mitigate contagious viral pathogens. This project is a continuation of our mission to study engineering guidelines needed to implement upgrades to HVAC Systems in order to deter airborne pathogens such as the covid-19 virus. In our previous projects we researched how covid-19 can possibly flow through the ambient air inside of restaurants, office spaces, and locomotive train cabins. As we continued our research, we were able to find some solutions that will be best used to deactivate and prevent the virus from …

Computational Modeling For Decision-Making Under Climate Change Uncertainty: Reservoir Simulation Game, Julianne Quinn

All ECSTATIC Materials

Almost every decision you make is under uncertainty. Will I need a rain jacket in the afternoon? Will they say yes if I ask them out? Is 1 hour enough time to finish this assignment? Oftentimes, we can use computational modeling to simulate different scenarios of what might happen in the future to inform what decisions are best on average, or what decisions minimize the worst case outcome. For example, you could decide what player to draft for your Fantasy Football team by simulating player performance. In this activity, we will simulate how much water to release from a dam …

Solar And Rain Catching Canopy. Urban Oasis, Afolabi Ibitoye, Langston Clark, Elena Zimareva, Evan Banks, Alexander Aptekar

Publications and Research

The Urban Oasis is designed to work within existing “pocket parks” in New York City as a combined rainwater collector, personal electronics charging station and resting designation for New Yorkers. Intended to not only lessen the demand on the city power grid by using renewable energy to charge devices, the urban oasis is also intended to mitigate grey water overfill in New York’s combined sewer system and, in general, serve as a model for responsible environmental stewardship in urban areas.

The important technical aspects of the canopy specifically analyzed were:

a) how much rainwater could the canopy be expected to …

Estimating Mineral Weathering Rates In Catskills Watersheds, Chris E. Johnson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Is Horizon Sampling More Powerful Than Depth Sampling?, Chris E. Johnson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Soil Chemistry Response To Wollastonite (Casio3) Addition At Hubbard Brook, Chris E. Johnson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Recovery Of Sensitive Watersheds In The Northeastern United States From Chronic Acidification: The Role Of Soil Chemistry, Chris E. Johnson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Soil Chemistry And The Recovery Of Sensitive Watersheds From Chronic Acidification, Chris E. Johnson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Antibiotics In The Environment, Erik Rosenfeldt

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Issues with Emerging Contaminants in Water