You are here

Projects Updates for collection: 2015 iCAP Objectives

  1. Provost describes iCAP in space inventory letter

    Associated Project(s): 
    2015 Illinois Climate Action Plan (2015 iCAP)
    Building-Level Energy Efficiency
    Maintain or Reduce Gross Square Footage

    Provost Andreas Cangellaris included this statement about the iCAP in the April 2019 letter (attached) to colleges and instructional units about the Space Inventory:

    "I also want to take this opportunity to recap several campus initiatives regarding space stewardship. As you may be aware, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign established the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) in May 2010 and updated the document in 2015. The document outlines strategies, initiatives, and targets toward meeting the stated goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. The targets and strategies detailed in the plan represent a series of commitments the University is making in order to achieve its sustainability goals, including the Net Zero Space Growth Policy as found in the CAM. I encourage you to review our commitments as outlined in the climate action plan and the Net Zero Space Growth Policy"

    Attached Files: 

  2. CEE student works with Dr. Schmidt and F&S

    Associated Project(s): 
    Green Infrastructure
    Independent Student Projects
    Stormwater Management Program

    Junren Wang, an undergraduate student in Civil and Environmental Engineering, working under the guidance of Dr. Art Schmidt, researched the impacts of existing green infrastructure on campus property and the relationship to potential cost reductions from City Stormwater Utility Fees.  She provided the following update and attached files.

    Dear All:

    This is an update for the GI project:

    ECE Permeable Pavement(U08032): All the necessary calculations have been completed. We may get 0.22% credit for this parcel.

    Design Center Detention(U16015):All the necessary calculations have been completed. We may get 0.307% credit for this parcel.

    FPC Detention(U17018): All the necessary calculations have been completed. We cannot get credits from this infrastructure. But we may get $250/10yr incentives.

    IGB Detention: More information need for the pump as mentioned last time. But it seems that we cannot get credit from this infrastucture.

    Waiting for your suggestion this Thursday!

    Thanks,

    Junren

    Attached Files: 

  3. Week 10 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    Good Afternoon All,

    This week’s meeting was productive and we were able to set up the excel spreadsheets needed to record data on the chiller plants, Abbott, and potable water. Over the past week I researched and created a checklist and table for conducting a water audit. The checklist will be shared here after some final corrections are made to it. I was able to determine what was needed and where stamped flow volumes are marked on each fixture. If there is no stamp on faucets there is a simple tool called a flow rate bag that will be purchased so auditors can determine the flow manually. As for urinals and lavatories the model and serial number will be recorded to search the model manually and figure out the flow rate. There is no hand tool to determine these flow rates.

    The spreadsheets will be given to Mike Marquissee so his team can collect the data we need faster. Once the data is collected some analysis of it will be done to help us determine efficiencies and water consumption of the different facilities. Also it will help us figure out if we have line losses in our systems.

    The next steps to be done this week is to get these excel spreadsheets to Mike and give him some time to gather all of the data we need. Analyze the raw data and compare the values to industry and national standards. This will allow us to figure out where we stand in our water consumption. Finish editing the water audit checklist and add snap shots of where the stamps can be located so it will be easier for auditors to know where to look. The water audit program we are creating right now will mainly be used for bathrooms and kitchens in university buildings. Research laboratories and student laboratories will be done by another team and program in the works.

    Thank You,
    Austin Jung

  4. Week 7-9 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    Good afternoon all,

    This week’s meeting was short but was necessary to update Morgan on the progress made over the past three weeks and to determine the next steps to be taken. To catch everyone up I have attached all of my findings for information on the chilled water loops. A quick summary of what I discovered is that the vet med chiller plant is on a separate loop because of how far it is from other campus buildings. In its loop it has 5 different buildings it provides chilled water to. The other 6 chiller plants are all connected in the main chilled water loop. The loop consists of about 115 different campus buildings and they can be seen in the document. The buildings found in this loop were found by sorting the utilities billing information by chilled water vendor. The five chiller plants on the main loop also have the capability to isolate themselves from the main loop and provide certain buildings with chilled water. This list can also be found in the document.

    I then read through the BIF’s plumbing materials list to see if it had any information on low flow fixtures. I found out that for some of the listed items like the lavatories in the description says “max flow 0.5 GPM in compliance with energy policy act of 1992 and ASME/ANSI standard A112.18.1M.” We do not know if it has all the listed fixtures and will have to continue looking into other building plumbing lists.

    Besides researching I also created a rough water audit plan for campus buildings. This will be a very intensive process as most water audits need to test every water fixture to get the actual flow rates of them. The first part of the audit will be reviewing data on each building to see the history of water consumption. Next the billing and metered water will be compared to see if there is a loss of water. After the data collection and comparison is complete auditors will walk through the building to see if there are any visible leaks and test each water fixtures actual flow rate. The flow rate will be recorded and used to compare each building against each other to see which will but retro fitted first based on most water consumption.

    For this upcoming week I will be researching and creating more questions to ask about the chiller plants and low flow water fixtures. We will try to plan meetings or phone calls with other knowledgeable people to see if they have information that can help our progress and clarify any questions we have. I will also be creating a checklist that can be given to interns or workers on how to perform the walk through part of the water audit and finding vendors that can sell us the tools needed to determine flow rates of different water fixture.

    Thank You,
    Austin Jung

    Attached Files: 

  7. Week 6 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    Good afternoon all,

    This week’s meeting went well and we were able to discover more information on the low-flow water fixtures installed in some of the university buildings. I was also able to update the excel sheet, to the correct display for when we get data. At the beginning of the meeting, I was able to catch the group up on the information I read in the Master Utilities Plan and Combined Heat and Power (CHP) convention. The CHP convention had very general information on CHP generation and some specifics in areas we are not interested in. There was not much information on how water consumption is monitored or improving.

    The Master Utilities Plan was very informative on how Abbot Power Plant and the Chiller plants work. It gave good background information and the condition they are in. It also provided suggestions on how to bring them back up to operational standards.

    During the meeting, we called Mark Warner, and asked him for more information on the low-flow water fixture installations. We were not able to gain an active list of updated buildings, but were able to learn some other information. We learned that Guy Grant was in charge of the program, and we will contact him in the following weeks. We also found out there were some complaints about the low-flow fixtures which led to the removal of some of these fixtures. For example, some of the sinks are not providing enough hot water. Another contact we will be reaching is the Refrigeration Foreman to learn more about the chiller plants.

    For the following meeting, I will continue my research on chiller plants and generate a list of questions about the projects to ask Kent Reifsteck, the Director of Utilities at F&S. I will also be using data on chilled water billing for each university building to figure out which buildings are in the chilled water loop. The low-flow water fixture project has been updated to involve which buildings have had them removed.

    Thanks,

    Austin Jung

    Attached Files: 

  9. Week 4 & 5 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    Good afternoon all,

    There was no week 4 update because of some time conflicts which lead to the cancelation of the meeting. This week proceeded normally and we recapped what happened for week 4 and continued progress forward on determining what data is needed for the chiller plants to determine their efficiencies and line losses. To keep everyone up to date last week I was able to email three different combined heat and power plants, they were in London, Helsinki, and Copenhagen. They either did not get back to me or told me to review what is on their site because no further information can be released. After reviewing all of their sites, I was still not able to find more information on water consumption of CHPs or how it is monitored. I also emailed Ashlynn Stillwell who is a professor here at UIUC and has done research on water consumption. She was able to give me some helpful sources to find industry standards on energy, fuel, and water consumption of all power plants.

    In this week’s meeting we reviewed the excel spread sheet I created to determine what data would need to be collected for our analysis of the chiller plants. We came to the conclusion that the water makeup (potable water) for each chiller plant, total Water Chilled at each chiller plant, energy used at each chiller plant, and total chilled water metered from buildings in the loop. With this data the cooling and energy efficiencies can be determined along with the line losses.

    For next week’s meeting we will be trying to figure out who to contact to determine which buildings have been retro fitted with the new low flow water fixtures and which have not yet. I will also be continuing my research on CHPs and reading into the master utilities plan. After reviewing the excel sheet I am going to make some edits to prepare it for when get our data. Thanks for keeping up and I will be back next week.

    Best,

    Austin Jung

    Attached Files: 

  14. Week 3 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    Good morning,

    Week 3’s meeting was a very informative and productive with the help of Mike, who is the director of budgeting and resource planning for the energy services division. Mike was able to help confirm and teach us about what is exactly happening at the chiller plants. He caught us up to date on what is being metered and where to find certain information. Together we brainstormed ideas on how we can determine a metric to measure the water consumption of each chiller plant. This included the metered water going into the cooling tower, water going into the chiller loop, and comparing that number to the total chilled water produced. Alongside this comparison the BTUs will also be monitored to see how much energy is being used to produce all of this.

    There are a couple of tasks that I will be getting done for week 4’s meeting. These include and not limited to:

    • Creating a list of resources needed to be collected to determine the efficiency of the chiller plants and how much water/energy they consume
    • Email other combine heat and power and chiller plants to see how they track or measure their water consumption
    • Email Ashlynn Stillwill to see if she knows any good places to look for national and industry averages and standards
    • Look into BIF’s grey water meter to determine how much water could be saved if grey water system was enabled

    This week was successful and looking forward to the information that will be collected in the following weeks. The attached document is some notes on UIUC cooling towers, Abbott, chiller plants, CHP plants, and our meeting.

     

    Thank you,
    Austin Jung

    Attached Files: 

  15. Week 2 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    Good morning all,

    Austin here and yesterday’s meeting with Morgan White and Sarthak Prasad went well. I reviewed articles on how power plants use freshwater and the ways to reduce their consumption. The biggest factor in water use at power plants is their cooling system. The metric for measuring this is gallon per KWh and it’s categorized by their withdrawal, consumption, and discharge. The different types of cooling systems have their own pros and cons. For example wet recirculating cooling is good because it doesn’t withdrawal a lot of water but it consumes more than the other methods. Then an example of an advanced cooling system is a hybrid system that used air and a cooling tower to combine the advantages of a cooling tower and the resourcefulness of using a dry system. The draw backs of using only air is it makes the thermal conversion efficiency go down and increases operational costs. More details can be found in the attached file.

    We proceeded to continue research on how our power plant and chiller plants operate by looking at the water and energy consumption of the billing logs. We plan on meeting with Mike next week to gain more insight on the chiller plants and their water consumption. Then we looked at the piping layouts for the Universities potable and cooling water pipelines.

    To further our research I will finish reviewing some more articles on cooling tower water consumption. Then find articles with more detail on how cogeneration plants work and what metrics are used to measure their energy and water consumption. There should be more data on this from different European studies because they have similar systems like ours at Abbott. Lastly I will familiarize myself with our systems by researching the chiller plants and Abbott information given on the Facility & Services webpage.

    Thanks,
    Austin Jung

    Attached Files: 

  16. Meeting Minutes for iWG February, 2019

    Associated Project(s): 
    iCAP Working Group (iWG)
    Student Sustainability Leadership Council (SSLC)
    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC)
    Energy Generation, Purchasing, & Distribution (eGen) SWATeam
    Energy Generation, Purchasing, & Distribution (eGen) SWATeam
    Agriculture, Land Use, Food, and Sequestration (ALUFS) SWATeam
    Zero Waste Recommendations Summary
    Solar Farm 2.0
    Internal price on carbon
    Reduce Transportation Emissions

    These are the meeting minutes from February 7, 2019.

    Attached Files: 

  17. Week 1 Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Audit / Inventory

    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

     

    Attached Files: 

  20. SSC funds South Farm Nitrate Monitoring Stations

    Associated Project(s): 
    Student Sustainability Committee (SSC)
    Reduce Nitrates from Agricultural Stormwater

    Chemical fertilizers necessary to sustain the agricultural practices on campus are significant sources of waterway pollution downstream from UIUC. These pollutants, primarily in the form of nitrate, can contaminate drinking water, leading to health concerns such as blue-baby syndrome. Currently, the contribution of agricultural practices to this nitrate pollution from campus is unknown. This project team will build two “Nitrate Monitoring Stations” that will continuously monitor the flow of water and agricultural pollutants. These stations will transmit the data they collect remotely, allowing easy access to UIUC students and community members. The first monitoring station will be located at the exit point for all water from the UIUC South Farm watershed and the second will be at the exit point for water flowing from the Animal Science Dairy Facility.

    Attached Files: 

Pages

Subscribe to