Sustainability Commons^™

2013 Fall Engr333 Fuel And Facilities Poster, 2013 Fall Engr333

ENGR 333

The objective of the project was to answer the question: “What would it take for Calvin College to operate a biofuel vehicle from campus resources.” The class split into 3 teams:

• Fuel/Feedstock
• Facilities/Infrastructure
• Vehicle

A Case Study Of Zero Energy Home Built For Solar Decathlon Competition 2013, Sanjib Mulepati

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Energy consumption in residential homes has been a subject of research related to sustainability. Reduction in the consumption of energy is a goal of sustainable construction. The Department of Energy (DOE) started a Solar Decathlon competition in 2002 in which the students from different universities around the globe build an energy efficient and affordable home suitable for their climate and location. The main goal of this competition is to select the best home that is designed and built in a sustainable way. In this study, the home designed and constructed for participation in the competition by the students at University …

Developing A Framework For Determining The Contribution Of Transportation Project To Sustainable Development, Karim Ahmed Abdel Warith

Open Access Dissertations

In the past few years, stakeholders in the transportation industry have been concerned with sustainability. However, transportation decision makers have had difficulty incorporating sustainability into transportation infrastructure decisions. This is mainly attributed to the vagueness of the term. Incorporating sustainability into transportation decision making has been a desire put forth by engineers for that past 10 years. However, with no apparent method of defining sustainability, designers and decision makers have not been able to fulfill this desire.

This investigation attempts to define sustainability in a comprehensive and quantitative manner. The research proposes a new methodology that relies on the objective …

2013 Fall Engr333 Project Assignment, Matthew K. Heun

ENGR 333

The Fall 2013 ENGR333 project focused on production and use of biofuels at Calvin University.

I asked the students “What would it take for Calvin College to operate a biofuel vehicle from campus resources?”

Customer

The customer for this project was Calvin’s Physical Plant director Phil Beezhold.

Social Capital And Walkability As Social Aspects Of Sustainability, Shannon Rogers, Kevin Gardner, Cynthia Carlson

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

The concepts of sustainability and sustainable development are frequently described as having three main components, sometimes referred to as the three pillars or the triple bottom line: environmental, economic, and social. Because of an historical focus in the sustainability field on correcting environmental problems, much consideration has been given to environmental issues, especially how they interface with economic ones. Frequently mentioned but rarely examined, the social aspects of sustainability have been considered the weakest and least described pillar. After a brief review of existing concepts and theories, this paper uses a case study approach to examine the third pillar more …

Agenda: Water, Oil And Gas: Recycling And Reuse Of Water, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment. Intermountain Oil And Gas Bmp Project, Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, Sturm College Of Law, University Of Denver, Colorado Bar Association, Natural Resources & Energy Section

Water, Oil and Gas: Recycling and Reuse of Water (June 11)

Program co-chairs: Sarah Klahn, Matthew Sura; planning committee: Susan Daggett, Kathryn Mutz.

Co-sponsored by: Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment, University of Colorado Law School, Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, Sturm College of Law, University of Denver, Natural Resources & Energy Section of the Colorado Bar Association.

This program is the second in a 3-part series focusing on critical water, oil and gas issues in Colorado. This second program focuses on the technology behind the recycling of produced water and hydraulic back fracturing flowback fluid and the issue of mandatory recycling. It also addresses the legal implications …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2013, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Senior Design Experience

Part of every UNLV engineering student's academic experience, the Senior Design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. Working in teams, the senior design project encourages students to use everything learned in the engineering and computer design programs to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

Beyond the classroom ...

Because of the requirement to work in teams, students also build good communication skills, presentation skills and even business writing skills. They also have to …

Soil Organic Carbon Dynamics In Agriculture: Model Development And Application From Daily To Decadal Timescales, Matthew P. Pelton

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Soil carbon (C) is the largest terrestrial C pool globally, containing more C than the atmosphere and biosphere. Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a source and sink of CO₂ emissions to and from the atmosphere, thus influencing future climate change. Understanding SOC dynamics is also important for maintaining C stocks to sustain and improve crop yields. An existing model to estimate changes in SOC due to respiration was modified to operate in three computational platforms: MS Excel, MS Excel with Visual Basic for Applications, and supercomputing. This model was validated against CO₂ flux data from a 9-year field …

Sustainable Urban Rail Trails: Designing The Cross Kirkland Corridor, Mia Cooledge

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is a guide to building a sustainable rail-trail, wherein I focus on invasive species removal, green pavement, and creating an inviting space with the inclusion of integrated art. When the City of Kirkland, WA purchased the 5.75 mile long section of railroad going through the city, I approached city manager Kurt Triplett to ask about his plans for the corridor. He liked the idea of aiming for a sustainable trail, so I wrote a guide to building an environmentally friendly trail based on a number of prominent readings on sustainable design.

Floatovoltaics: Quantifying The Benefits Of A Hydro-Solar Power Fusion, Abe Mckay

Pomona Senior Theses

To slow climate change, humans should take immediate and widespread action. One way to slow climate change is by switching to switch to renewable power plants such as solar fields. Recently, pioneering companies have built solar fields on water bodies. This study found that such a pairing of water and solar could increase production efficiency by 8-10% through panel cooling, save millions of liters of water from evaporation, and produce energy with under-utilized space.

Agenda: What The Frack? How Your Investments Can Impact The Fracking Industry, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment. Intermountain Oil And Gas Bmp Project, Sustainable Impact Investment Advisors

What the Frack? How Your Investments Can Impact the Fracking Industry (March 13)

Sustainable Impact Investment Advisors, a professional association of investment advisors whose practices focus on sustainable and socially responsible investing, sponsored a panel conversation on hydraulic fracking. A panel of experts, including industry representatives and grass roots opponents, discussed the pros and cons of fracking. The panel provided an overview of fracking, and food for thought about whether you choose to include this industry in your investments, or influence companies to use this technology with only the utmost care.

Energy Assessment Of Smithtown, New York, Allyson Murray, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Energy management and carbon mitigation plans, often created to address global issues, must be implemented locally. Each specific area has its own needs and problems. For this study, we used publicly available data to create an energy assessment for the Town of Smithtown, a municipality of 116,000 people on the north shore of Long Island (New York). We found that motor vehicles consume the largest amount of energy, followed by space heating for both residential and commercial-industrial purposes. Local policies probably can only modestly affect transportation energy use, although federal policies may have significant effects over the next several decades. …

Tackling Change: Future-Proofing Water, Agriculture, And Food Security In An Era Of Climate Uncertainty, Peter G. Mccornick, Vladimir Smakhtin, Luna Bharati, Robyn Johnston, Matthew Mccartney, Fraser Sugden, Floriane Clement, Beverly Mcintyre

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

In 1950 the global population was just over 2.5 billion. Now, in 2013, it is around 7 billion. Although population growth is slowing, the world is projected to have around 9.6 billion inhabitants by 2050. Most of the population increase will be in developing countries where food is often scarce, and land and water are under pressure. To feed the global population in 2050 the world will have to produce more food without significantly expanding the area of cultivated land and, because of competition between a greater number of water users, with less freshwater. On top of land and water …

Cost Effectiveness Of Recycling: A Systems Model, David J. Tonjes, Sreekanth Mallikarjun

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Financial analytical models of waste management systems have often found that recycling costs exceed direct benefits, and in order to economically justify recycling activities, externalities such as household expenses or environmental impacts must be invoked. Certain more empirically based studies have also found that recycling is more expensive than disposal. Other work, both through models and surveys, have found differently. Here we present an empirical systems model, largely drawn from a suburban Long Island municipality. The model accounts for changes in distribution of effort as recycling tonnages displace disposal tonnages, and the seven different cases examined all show that curbside …

Occurrence Of Antimicrobials And Antimicrobial Resistance Genes In Beef Cattle Storage Ponds And Swine Treatment Lagoons, Yuping Zhang, Chiqian Zhang, David B. Parker, Daniel D. Snow, Zhi Zhou, Xu Li

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

Livestock manure treatment and storage structures are potential environmental sources of antimicrobials and antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs). In this study, the occurrence of antimicrobials and ARGs was investigated in the water and the sludge compartments of beef cattle storage ponds and swine lagoons. Analysis was focused on two families of antimicrobials (sulfonamide and tetracycline) and the corresponding ARGs (sul1, sul2, tetO, tetQ and tetX). Results showed that the pseudo-partitioning coefficients of tetracyclines were higher than those of sulfonamides, suggesting different distributions of these two classes of antimicrobials between water and sludge. The ARGs tested were …

Degradable Plastics And Solid Waste Management Systems, David J. Tonjes, Krista L. Thyberg

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Plastics, which are woven into the fabric of modern life, have consequential impacts on the environment. Many of these are associated with end-of-lifetime processes, and include chemical contamination of the environment and effects from litter. Plastics also complicate waste management processes, causing contamination in composting operations, and having poor recovery rates through recycling. Plastics that are not as biologically recalcitrant, that decompose when use is done, have been perceived as solutions to at least some of these problems. The first generation of degradable plastics did not meet marketing claims; some of the more recent formulations, partly as a consequence of …

Municipal Waste Management: Suffolk County Municipal Systems, Services And Infrastructure, Krista L. Greene, Susan Lienau, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

This report describes the municipal waste management systems used by local governments to manage solid waste in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. There are ten Towns that serve as the primary planners for waste systems in Suffolk County. Many of the 33 villages in Suffolk County have established their own waste management programs and policies. All programs tend to follow the same general plan of the approaches used by their respective Towns, however. All programs provide some degree of recycling services, although the scope of the services varies tremendously.

Using Gis To Delineate Headwater Stream Origins In The Appalachian Coal-Belt Region Of Kentucky, Jonathan A. Villines

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Human activity such as surface mining can have substantial impacts on the natural environment. Performing a Cumulative Hydrologic Impact Assessment (CHIA) of such impacts on surface water systems requires knowing the location and extent of these impacted streams. The Jurisdictional Determination (JD) of a stream’s protected status under the Clean Water Act (CWA) involves locating and classifying streams according to their flow regime: ephemeral, intermittent, or perennial. Due to their often remote locations and small size, taking a field inventory of headwater streams for surface mining permit applications or permit reviews is challenging. A means of estimating headwater stream location …

An Investigation Of Waste Glass-Based Geopolymers Supplemented With Alumina, Mary U. Christiansen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

An increased consideration of sustainability throughout society has resulted in a surge of research investigating sustainable alternatives to existing construction materials. A new binder system, called a geopolymer, is being investigated to supplement ordinary portland cement (OPC) concrete, which has come under scrutiny because of the CO2 emissions inherent in its production.

Geopolymers are produced from the alkali activation of a powdered aluminosilicate source by an alkaline solution, which results in a dense three-dimensional matrix of tetrahedrally linked aluminosilicates. Geopolymers have shown great potential as a building construction material, offering similar mechanical and durability properties to OPC. Additionally, geopolymers have …

Estimation Of Performance Indices For The Planning Of Sustainable Transportation Systems, Alexander Paz, Pankaj Maheshwari, Pushkin Kachroo, Sajjad Ahmad

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

In the context of sustainable transportation systems, previous studies have either focused only on the transportation system or have not used a methodology that enables the treatment of incomplete, vague, and qualitative information associated with the available data. This study proposes a system of systems (SOS) and a fuzzy logic modeling approach. The SOS includes the Transportation, Activity, and Environment systems. The fuzzy logic modeling approach enables the treatment of the vagueness associated with some of the relevant data. Performance Indices (PIs) are computed for each system using a number of performance measures. The PIs illustrate the aggregated performance of …

Investigation Of Wastewater Treatment Plant Sustainability Potential In Terms Of Resource Recovery Essentials, Aoife Moloney

Theses

This thesis aims to explore the sustainability potential which exists in Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTP's); particularly focusing on nutrient, energy, and water recovery and reuse. The core of the research will focus on the establishment of a sustainable Resource Recovery Treatment Plant (RRTP) plan for Limerick Main Drainage (LMD) WWTP, and potentially utilising this as a case study plant which could act as a foundation example within the sector.

There is a genuine need to investigate more sustainable options in wastewater treatment (WWT); increasing energy and sludge management costs are a real issue for non-sustainable WWTP's given that thousands of …

Improving Implementation Of A Regional In-Line Chlorinator In Rural Panama Through Development Of A Regionally Appropriate Field Guide, Benjamin A. Yoakum

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Access to safe drinking water has a direct effect on improving human health and their quality of life. One country still struggling with providing access to safe drinking water to all of its population is Panama. Panama's largest indigenous group, the Ngöbe people, is disproportionately affected by lack of access to safe drinking water. One way Panama's Ministry of Health (MINSA) is attempting to increase access to safe drinking water to the Ngöbe people is by disinfecting the water already captured by rural gravity fed water systems constructed within in the Ngöbe-Bugle reservation. This is accomplished using an in-line chlorinator …

2012 Fall Engr333 Project Final Report, 2012 Fall Engr333

ENGR 333

Calvin College is considering an addition to the West Wing of the Spoelhof Center to provide additional space for the art and business programs. The construction of this new addition provides the opportunity to investigate the feasibility of installing new, sustainable technology. This semester the students of Engineering 333 were presented with the following challenge: “What it will take for Calvin College to install a geothermal HVAC system for the West Wing?” A geothermal HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system utilizes the relatively constant temperature of the earth to provide heating during winter and cooling during summer. Geothermal HVAC …

2012 Fall Engr333 Student Seminar Presentation, 2012 Fall Engr333

ENGR 333

File for student presentation, given by students in the Fall 2012 class of ENGR333.

The Impact Of Advanced Wastewater Treatment Technologies And Wastewater Strength On The Energy Consumption Of Large Wastewater Treatment Plants, Timothy Stephen Newell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Wastewater treatment is an energy intensive process often requiring the use of advanced treatment technologies. Stricter effluent standards have resulted in an increase in the number of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) with advanced treatment over time. Accordingly, associated energy consumption has also increased. Concerns about lowering operating costs for WWTPs and reducing associated greenhouse gas generation present an incentive to investigate energy use in WWTPs. This research investigated the impact of wastewater strength and the introduction of advanced treatment technologies, to replace traditional technologies on energy use to treat wastewater in WWTPs. Major unit processes were designed for a 100 …

Investigating The Impacts Of Conventional And Advanced Treatment Technologies On Energy Consumption At Satellite Water Reuse Plants, Jonathan Roy Bailey

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

With the ever increasing world population and the resulting increase in industrialization and agricultural practices, depletion of two of the world's most important natural resources, water and fossil fuels, is inevitable. Water reclamation and reuse is the key to protecting these natural resources. Water reclamation using smaller decentralized wastewater treatment plants, known as satellite water reuse plants (WRP), have become popular in the last decade. With stricter standards and regulations on effluent quality and requirements for a smaller land footprint (i.e. real estate area), additional treatment processes and advanced technologies are needed. This greatly increases the energy consumption of an …

Slides: Routes To Sustainability: Natural Gas Development And Air And Water Resources In The Rocky Mountain Region, Mark Williams

Monitoring and Protecting Groundwater During Oil and Gas Development (November 26)

Presenter: Mark Williams, University of Colorado Boulder

14 slides

Slides: What Laundry Can Teach Us: Five Principles For New Business Models, Teju Ravilochan

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Teju Ravilochan, CEO, The Unreasonable Institute

17 slides

Slides: Envirofit: Making The World Fit For Humanity, Jessica Alderman

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Jessica Alderman, Director, ENVIROFIT

15 slides

Slides: Multi-Dimensional Energy Poverty Index (Mepi), Morgan Bazilian

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Dr. Morgan Bazilian, Deputy Director, Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis (JISEA), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

8 slides