Green Engineering Blog (Dietz): October 2016

We will be dividing into teams, for a series of short projects intended to introduce students to the Green Engineering "Core 4" topics:

Algae
Aquaponics
Materials
Bicycles

In your projects, you will be responsible for defining and implementing both academic goals and impact goals for your project.

Academic goals might include such things as learning about the science of biodiesel, the biology and chemistry of aquaponics, materials science and engineering, or the engineering of bicycle systems.

Impact goals would include such things as:

educating members of the community about the energy goals of biodiesel,
providing the Tiger Loft with a supply of fresh vegetables,
bicycle safety and efficiency,
sharing your research with academics at universities,
creating a product to commercialize and market
Sending an email to someone you don't know
Writing an 'Instructable' so others can reproduce your work and potentially improve upon it.

Example- students last year created a 'penny board' mini-skateboard from fused plastics- but then didn't market it, so no impact beyond Green Engineering.

Your efforts will determine how successful your project will be. The teacher will like not be the subject-matter expert on your topic. An example of this last year was the aquaponics project, where the students became the 'experts' through their research and experimentation.

They developed an original project involving the treatment of wastewater using algae.

The ideas for the project will need to come from you; the teachers are there to guide you through the design process.

It is important to reach out to people outside the classroom, and incorporate their feedback.

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Greenengineering Student Wiki website ( https://greengineers.wikispaces.com/ ):

Under Students link( https://greengineers.wikispaces.com/GNRG ) there is more detailed information about each of the classes.

Look at information from the previous years on what has already been done in the past for:

Algae
Aquaponics
Materials
Bicycles

There are numerous websites and links on the Wiki.

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Tharun( Senior):

Aquaponics

Aquaponics uses non-soil grow beds to grow plants, fertilized by ammonium nitrate produced by bacteria from metabolizing ammonia( a poison) excreted by fish living in a fish tank.

Last year, many of the fish died because there was not a healthy colony of bacteria metabolizing the ammonia waste.

Tharun demonstrated the Aquaponics setup. Fancy LED gro-light from Digital Lumens( https://www.digitallumens.com/ ) has specific light spectra. Sunlight has a broad spectrum-- this one has distinct bands if you look at it through a spectroscope.

Algae/Biodiesel-

Alternative approach- Grew algae in plastic bottles.

Water should not have chlorine in it for algae to grow. Water should be treated to remove chlorine.

Algae( a plant) stores fat, which can be extracted to create biodiesel.

Getting biodiesel from algae proved more difficult than anticipated-- you will need to research the process of extracting biodiesel with non-polar solvents.

Getting Unstuck--

Algae in open containers exposed to air--- died off-- turned from green to white to red--- gave up.

- switched to using water bottles--worked much better because they were closed-- didn't get attacked by mold and bacteria-- put holes in top and an air bubbler.

-One species didn't grow-- stopped using it.

- Algae from pond may have bad stuff in it.

- Needed a way to dry the algae- centrifuge did not work well.

- took coffee filter---filtered algae left mooshy 'plates' of algae.

- A commercial dehydrator may have been more effective.

Used Miracle-Gro to feed algae. Researched best algae species to use( for example see http://www.oilgae.com/algae/oil/yield/yield.html )

Materials Research: Mycelium

Mycelium using mushroom roots growing on sawdust to create a mold-based biodegradable styrofoam-like material.

Greenengineering worked with students at Rensellaer Polytechnic. Students there formed a company, Ecovative Design, to market mycelium-based tackboards and packing materials- see

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/20/form-and-fungus

Bicycles

Last year-

Blender Bike
Bamboo Bike
Connect with Tour de Newton- spread message at Bicycle water stops.

Possibilities to explore:

Start an in-school bicycle maintenance shop
Promote bicycling to school
Design a bicycle shelter
Design a new electric-assist bicycle
Phone charger powered by bicycle
Bicycle safety program for elementary schools
Modular bicycles
Safety systems for accident avoidance/defensive driving

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Everything is on the Internet.

Traditionally in school students have learned academic subjects, then tried to apply them later on. However, it is often unclear at the time how the information is useful.

This is a movement now in education to flip this model to one of on-demand learning, where you study something when you need to know it from the 'University of Google'.

One good place to start looking is on the Greenengineering website( https://greengineers.wikispaces.com/ ) which has a lot of information that previous teams had found.

You will find suggestions of what to do next---especially if you are moving in a new direction.

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Greenengineering is a S.T.E.A.M.( science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) environment-

progress and innovation occurs through getting different perspectives.

Innovations rarely happen in isolation. It's when you get a new piece of information to combine with what you know that you can create something new.

Frustrations-

Working in a team environment can be hard. There are always freeloaders, solo practitioners, and people in the middle. Important that people have distinct areas of responsibility.
Learning to work effectively in a group dynamic typically happens in a graduate school research group-- here you are learning it in high school.
You will learn a lot from your peers.

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Green Engineering is not like chemistry class, where the teacher determines the experiment-- this class is not like that-- you have to figure out what to do.

Documentation and Publishing

In this class, you will be doing original research. One goal is to have students publish a research paper on their work. Another alternate would be to publish an Instructable . In all science and engineering work, it is essential that you document your work--

In your research notebook
for the wiki
for your research paper

Write stuff down in your paper notebook. Your grade will be based both on what you are doing and how you are documenting it.

Documentation is essential for many reasons-

So you know what you have been doing
To enable others to build upon your work
To establish priority in patent disputes

Next class-- Dr. Tupper will show some of her university research notebooks.

Last year, each 201 team uploaded large posts once a month to the wiki.

Another option is to use a Blogger site.

In addition, you will likely NOT have the supplies you need right away- NNHS ordering process can be slow. Meanwhile, while you are waiting, you will need to find productive ways to use your time--

Researching
Organizing and cleaning

Mr. Chinosi used outside grants to speed up the purchasing process.

Ben- LigerBots raised $40,000 through outside donors such as PTC and Google.

Other options- GoFundMe, Kickstarter, etc.

Next Steps:

Think about the options for the different areas of investigation-

What are your top choices?
What are your bottom choices?

Rank the areas you are considering working on
Develop an opinion
Materials and Bicycle areas have the most potential room for growth.

Students continued to make progress building their designs for solar updraft chimneys.

It is planned to test them on Friday.

Nicely engineered unit had black surface with holes and undersupports to encourage updrafts....

Solar Updraft Chimney by dietzj on Sketchfab

Discussion- Would heat production be increased if solar collector portion was made of material with a higher specific heat capacity than air- fox example, filled aluminum cans filled with water, painted flat black? Water has a capacity of about 4 Joule/deg C/gm vs about 1 Joule/deg/gm for air.

Air Density: A cubic meter of air at 40 degrees C has a mass of about 1.100 kg, vs about 1.170 kg at 25 degrees C. So a solar updraft chimney containing a cubic meter of air might press upwards with a force of about 70 grams. According to the Betz limit, the maximum efficiency for a turbine is 59%, so the most force that could be captured is about 42 grams.