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Student Projects for Engineering Experience & Design

Environmental Design

Interdisciplinary teams of students work each year to design systems to treat agricultural, industrial or hazardous waste or envision and build systems to meet our needs for a sustainable future.  Teams have been highly successful at both the Waste-management Education and Research Consortium (WERC) and the U.S. EPA P3 Sustainability design competitions.  Some recent projects include:


2010, EPA P3:               

Sustainable Year-Round Food Production in Cold Climates. Received Phase II Award and Grant (S. Powers, advisor).
Pilot-scale greenhouse built on campus (2010) for further research and development (2011).

2010, EPA P3:             

Farm Waste to Energy: Anaerobic Digesters for Small-Scale Dairy Farms. Received Phase II Award and Grant and Student Choice Award (S. Grimberg, advisor). Further lab-scale testing underway to design (2010) and build (2011) a pilot-scale digester system.


2009, WERC:

Zero Waste from a Semiconductor Manufacturing Facility. First place award. (T. Holsen and S. Powers, advisors)


2008, WERC:

Design of an inland desalination process for rural, isolated communities. Received best oral and bench-scale presentation awards (S. Grimberg, Advisor)


2007, WERC:

Protecting Spinach Crops from Irrigation Water Contaminated with E. coli. Received second place award. (A. Zander, advisor)


2006, EPA P3:

Biodiesel as a Sustainable Alternative to Petroleum Diesel in Potsdam School Buses. Received an Honorable Mention award. (A. Ferro, S. Powers, A. Rossner, advisors).


2005, WERC
 System to Sequester Carbon Dioxide from Power Plant Flue Gas. Received first place and the USDA awards. (S. Grimberg, advisor)


Advisor:       Susan Powers and Stefan Grimberg