Posts tagged sustainable
CU develops solar toilet for third world use
Mar 13th
by CU-Boulder ready for India unveiling
A revolutionary University of Colorado Boulder toilet fueled by the sun that is being developed to help some of the 2.5 billion people around the world lacking safe and sustainable sanitation will be unveiled in India this month.
The self-contained, waterless toilet, designed and built using a $777,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has the capability of heating human waste to a high enough temperature to sterilize human waste and create biochar, a highly porous charcoal, said project principal investigator Karl Linden, professor of environmental engineering. The biochar has a one-two punch in that it can be used to both increase crop yields and sequester carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
The project is part of the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge,” an effort to develop a next-generation toilet that can be used to disinfect liquid and solid waste while generating useful end products, both in developing and developed nations, said Linden. Since the 2012 grant, Linden and his CU-Boulder team have received an additional $1 million from the Gates Foundation for the project, which includes a team of more than a dozen faculty, research professionals and students, many working full time on the effort.
According to the Gates Foundation, the awards recognize researchers who are developing ways to manage human waste that will help improve the health and lives of people around the world. Unsafe methods to capture and treat human waste result in serious health problems and death – food and water tainted with pathogens from fecal matter results in the deaths of roughly 700,000 children each year.
Linden’s team is one of 16 around the world funded by the Gates “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge” since 2011. All have shipped their inventions to Delhi, where they will be on display March 20-22 for scientists, engineers and dignitaries. Other institutional winners of the grants range from Caltech to Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the National University of Singapore.
The CU-Boulder invention consists of eight parabolic mirrors that focus concentrated sunlight to a spot no larger than a postage stamp on a quartz-glass rod connected to eight bundles of fiber-optic cables, each consisting of thousands of intertwined, fused fibers, said Linden. The energy generated by the sun and transferred to the fiber-optic cable system — similar in some ways to a data transmission line — can heat up the reaction chamber to over 600 degrees Fahrenheit to treat the waste material, disinfect pathogens in both feces and urine, and produce char.
“Biochar is a valuable material,” said Linden. “It has good water holding capacity and it can be used in agricultural areas to hold in nutrients and bring more stability to the soils.” A soil mixture containing 10 percent biochar can hold up to 50 percent more water and increase the availability of plant nutrients, he said. Additionally, the biochar can be burned as charcoal and provides energy comparable to that of commercial charcoal.
Linden is working closely with project co-investigators Professor R. Scott Summers of environmental engineering and Professor Alan Weimer chemical and biological engineering and a team of postdoctoral fellows, professionals, graduate students, undergraduates and a high school student.
“We are doing something that has never been done before,” said Linden. “While the idea of concentrating solar energy is not new, transmitting it flexibly to a customizable location via fiber-optic cables is the really unique aspect of this project.” The interdisciplinary project requires chemical engineers for heat transfer and solar energy work, environmental engineers for waste treatment and stabilization, mechanical engineers to build actuators and moving parts and electrical engineers to design control systems, Linden said.
Tests have shown that each of the eight fiber-optic cables can produce between 80 and 90 watts of energy, meaning the whole system can deliver up to 700 watts of energy into the reaction chamber, said Linden. In late December, tests at CU-Boulder showed the solar energy directed into the reaction chamber could easily boil water and effectively carbonize solid waste.
While the current toilet has been created to serve four to six people a day, a larger facility that could serve several households simultaneously is under design with the target of meeting a cost level of five cents a day per user set by the Gates Foundation. “We are continuously looking for ways to improve efficiency and lower costs,” he said.
“The great thing about the Gates Foundation is that they provide all of the teams with the resources they need,” Linden said. “The foundation is not looking for one toilet and one solution from one team. They are nurturing unique ideas and looking at what the individual teams bring overall to the knowledge base.”
Linden, who called the 16 teams a “family of researchers,” said the foundation has funded trips for CU-Boulder team members to collaborate with the other institutions in places like Switzerland, South Africa and North Carolina. “Instead of sink or swim funding, they want every team to succeed. In some ways we are like a small startup company, and it’s unlike any other project I have worked on during my career,” he said.
CU-Boulder team member Elizabeth Travis from Parker, Colo., who is working toward a master’s degree in the engineering college’s Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities, said her interest in water and hygiene made the Reinvent the Toilet project a good fit. “It is a really cool research project and a great team,” she said. “Everyone is very creative, patient and supportive, and there is a lot of innovation. It is exciting to learn from all of the team members.”
“We have a lot of excitement and energy on our team, and the Gates Foundation values that,” Linden said. “It is one thing to do research, another to screw on nuts and bolts and make something that can make a difference. To me, that’s the fun part, and the project is a nice fit for CU-Boulder because we have a high interest in developing countries and expertise in all of the renewable energy technologies as well as sanitation.”
The CU-Boulder team is now applying for phase two of the Gates Foundation Reinvent the Toilet grant to develop a field-worthy system to deploy in a developing country based on their current design, and assess other technologies that may enhance the toilet system, including the use of high-temperature fluids that can collect, retain and deliver heat.
-CU-
$143 Million Athletic Facilities Re-Design Approved By 9-0 Vote
Dec 4th
DENVER – The University of Colorado athletic department on Wednesday took its most significant step forward in two-plus decades, receiving the green light from the school’s Board of Regents to proceed with a comprehensive facilities re-design and upgrade.
The Regents voted 9-0 to approve a $143 million plan presented by Athletic Director Rick George that will:
· Add an indoor multipurpose practice facility (football field/300 meter track), whose location is to be determined. The proposed site is on Franklin Field, just east of Folsom Field’s east side. The indoor facility also would be used for tailgating on game day;
· Refurbish the Dal Ward Athletics Center, which was completed in 1991, to include an Olympic sports strength training room in the sub-basement level and new locker rooms and equipment room on the field level.
· Redesign Dal Ward’s first floor for the expansion of Olympic sports/sports medicine, a leadership development center and an end zone club with club seating and loge boxes;
· Transform the second floor of Dal Ward to increase the athletic department’s academic support system from its current 5,115 square feet to 17,200 square feet. The training table will remain on the second floor;
· Add a 21,900-square foot high-performance sports center on the northeast corner of the stadium, as well as a rooftop terrace on the northeast corner (which will generate revenue by being rentable for non-game-day events), converting the south offices at Folsom Field to retail space. The rooftop terrace is also to be used on non-game-day events.
· Also proposed for the third floor of the sports performance center are team meeting rooms. Coaches’ offices and athletic administration offices will move from their current locations at Folsom Field’s “gates” to the suite level (fourth) on Folsom’s east side.
“I’m very excited about what this will do for our program long-term,” said George, who was named CU’s athletic director on July 18 and started work on Aug. 12. “It will allow us to create a world-class, holistic student-athlete experience. It will allow us to compete for and win championships, and it will allow us to become fiscally responsible. I believe it’s a long-term sustainable model.”
He said the long-range, comprehensive plan obviously was well-received by the Regents: “Getting a 9-0 vote is very rewarding for the whole group that has worked on this.”
By the time ground is broken – hopefully this spring – on the department’s “sustainable excellence initiative,” George hopes to have one-third of the money raised. “It could be corporately, it could be an annual revenue that we generate, it could be private donors.”
Regent Steve Bosley called George’s proposal “a well-thought out business plan” that represents a large and potentially lucrative investment for the campus, city of Boulder and state. Of the possible criticism aimed at launching such a project without a large number of donations in hand, Bosley said, “That dog won’t hunt.” He said he prefers “starting with a vision and turning it into a plan.”
Close to $10 million “in actual gifts and concrete pledges” has been raised thus far, George said. “And in the last two months, we’ve canvassed all areas of the country, from our own backyard to each coast and have ‘asks’ out there in the neighborhood of $40 million more.”
While a $50 million goal initially was stated, with an early December timetable, George said that number “was never one that we had to meet by December. We are enthusiastic, focused and driven on raising the initial funds needed for the plan . . . however, it is not, and never has been, a deal-breaker to have raised the money by the first of December.”
The upgrading of CU’s facilities, said George, goes beyond potentially leveling the playing field in the Pac-12. Rather, “It’s what we should be doing for our student-athletes,” he said. “This is a significant area of need for our student-athletes. We don’t have locker room spaces, we don’t have academic spaces that our student-athletes need to be successful, to have a great experience – and we need to address that.
“We have a strength facility that’s only 10,000 square feet for 300-plus student-athletes, spirit squad, what have you. It’s a need, something we need to have for this program to be successful. Notwithstanding what other schools are doing, what they’re doing is great, but this is what we need at CU to be successful long-term.”
In attending Pac-12 Conference football games over the past several years – CU has been a Pac-12 member since 2011 – Regent Sue Sharkey said she became aware of a facilities upgrades from “seeing cranes all over the place” at football stadiums. “We need to get it done and we need to get it done now,” she said.
In addition to George’s presentation on Wednesday, the Regents heard from football coach Mike MacIntyre; men’s basketball coach Tad Boyle (via video); Kris Livingston, associate athletic director/student success; Miguel Rueda, head athletic trainer. The Regents also watch several video presentations from student-athletes in all sports speaking about their various facility needs.
MacIntyre told the board he was “excited” about the future of the university and CU football, but added, “There’s a ceiling we’ll hit in recruiting if this (the facilities upgrade) if this not done. It’s always either the first or second question I get in recruiting. He also said coaches he recruits against in the Pac-12 Conference have come into Colorado pursing in-state prospects and, because of CU’s current facilities, have questioned the school’s overall commitment to athletics. His first Buffs team finished 4-8 overall, 1-8 in the Pac-12 Conference.
Livingston told the Regents the athletic department’s academic support system’s physical resources have shrunk over the last several years from 8,400 square feet to just over 5,000 square feet. By way of comparison to another Pac-12 member, Oregon’s athletic department academic space is at 40,000 square feet. But Oregon also has nearly twice as many student-athletes as CU’s 340.
Rueda said the high performance sports center would help him and his staff better identify and treat student-athletes before minor injuries become major. The center, he added, “will allow for a program where our student-athletes will receiver world-class and holistic resources dedicated to helping them achieve.”
George said the proposal’s next phase is a presentation to architects. He hopes ground can be broken this spring, with a completion date of the 2015-16 academic-athletic year. The upgrades, he said, will put the Buffs “on par with the best out there” and will “set us up for the long-term and put an end for any Band-Aid type improvements to get us through the short-term. We’ll be set for a long time.
DAVID PLATI | ASSOCIATE AD/SPORTS INFORMATION
A county land-use office to help with rebuilding regulations
Oct 10th
Boulder County, Colo. – The Boulder County Planning Commission and Board of County Commissioners will be considering interim development regulations for homes and other structures damaged or destroyed by the historic rains, mudslides and flooding of September 2013. Two upcoming Public Hearings have been scheduled:
What: Planning Commission Public Hearing
When: Wednesday, October 16, 2013, 4:30 pm
Where: Commissioners’ Hearing Room, third floor, Boulder County Courthouse, 1325 Pearl St., Boulder
What: Board of County Commissioners Public Hearing
When: Wednesday, October 23, 2013, 4:30 pm
Where: Commissioners’ Hearing Room, third floor, Boulder County Courthouse, 1325 Pearl St., Boulder
Boulder County is planning for the need and desire to rebuild quickly and restore the community while implementing measures to protect public safety and investments through hazard mitigation and avoidance.
“The goal is rebuilding resilient communities which can better withstand extreme events and maintain the community fabric of these impacted areas,” said Land Use Director Dale Case. “Wise, sustainable rebuilding regulations are a vital part of the recovery process.”
In the aftermath of the unprecedented destruction and the magnitude of extreme weather experienced in September, county staff have closely examined existing regulations dating back to the 1990s and determined that they don’t sufficiently meet public safety standards in all circumstances. For example, current regulations allow property owners to replace structures in some cases without a review and in other cases a review which would require a floodplain development permit which may not adequately address currently known flooding behavior.
Given our community’s recent extreme weather experience, county officials believe is counterproductive for individuals, insurance companies and the public to invest the time, money, and energy into rebuilding in a location that is known to be hazardous.
In many cases the regulations will allow rebuilding to occur within existing lot lines, but require that structures be raised up out of the flood hazard areas or relocated out of hazard areas to a safer location on the property. The current regulations also require structures to be rebuilt at the same height as the old structures. The proposed regulations will allow changes in height to accommodate floodproofing, such as raising the height of the structure to avoid future flood damage.
These interim regulations are proposed to be in effect until April 30, 2014. During this time, property owners can rebuild destroyed or substantially damaged structures in safer locations, in a way that meets the floodplain development requirements (if the new structure is proposed to be located in a floodplain) without going through Site Plan Review. Land Use staff will work with property owners and representatives from other county departments to perform a Hazard Mitigation Review. The goal of this review is to help property owners rebuild in a way that is more resilient to future disasters.
During this interim period staff is committed to reaching out to the communities to understand the needs and issues of residents who are facing complex issues to restore their homes, property and lives. As part of the effort to assist property owners and residents impacted by the flood the county has set up a Flood Recovery Center at the county’s Land Use Department staffed by functional experts in onsite wastewater (septic) systems, floodplain regulations, planning and building code. The center and the county will also pursue other restoration resources and hazard mitigation programs to assist those impacted.
The staff recommendation and proposed regulations have been posted to the Land Use Department’s website(www.bouldercounty.org/property/build/pages/lucodeupdatedc130003.aspx) for public review and comment. Residents are encouraged to read the draft, call us at 720-564-2623 if you have questions, email your comments to planner@bouldercounty.org, attend the upcoming public hearings, and make your opinion known.
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