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SEES advisor Arthur Kney (Professor, Civil Environmental Engineering) and SEES member Andy Baker ('06; Spanish, Environmental Engineering) traveled to Quito, Ecuador for the 1st International Congress on Science and Technology. Baker presented on the evaluation and development of a metal-oxide arsenic sorbent material, while Kney ran a workshop and gave a presentation on endocrine disrupting chemicals and a biological/colorimetric procedure for their detection.
[Article Coming Soon]
After the impressive showing by a SEES team at the WERC Environmental Design Contest in April, SEES was offered an RFP to further develop a bench-scale arsenic treatment system. SEES received a grant totalling more than $20,000 from WERC for the summer's research. SEES members Andy Baker, Paul Dimick and Mark Battaglia spent the first half of the summer working at Lafayette developing novel methods and procedures for testing the arsenic adsorbent material. Baker and Battaglia spent August on the New Mexico State University campus in Las Cruces, New Mexico working at the WERC facilities.
SEES members Paul Dimick and Andy Baker and co-advisor Prof. Samuel A. Morton III presented at the Joint Meeting of the 2nd International Conference on Green and Sustainable Chemistry and the 9th Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference. They were invited to the conference in Washington, DC to present on the development of the SEES organization and on incorporating Green Engineering principles into Senior Chemical Engineering process design.
Click here to view the poster Dimick and Baker presented.
n June of 2005 the advisors for the Society for Environmental Engineers and Scientists (SEES) (Arthur Kney, Sam Morton and Steve Mylon) were awarded an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2005 P3 grant totaling $10,000; with the Lafayette College contribution the final total of the grant comes to $25,764.
This is the 2nd year for the P3. It is a competition taking place among roughly 50 colleges and universities across the United States, culminating in a final contest, May 2006 in Washington, DC. The program highlights People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) ? the three pillars of sustainability; a follow up program to the P2, a contest that focused on pollution prevention. Students compete to research, develop and design solutions to challenges to sustainability.
The P3 Award program is a partnership between the public and private sectors to progress toward sustainability by achieving the mutual goals of economic prosperity, protection of the natural systems of the planet, and providing a higher quality of life for its people. EPA and its affiliates offer the P3 Award competition to respond to the technical needs of the developed and developing world in moving towards the goal of sustainability.
Visit the SEES P3 page to follow the team's progress throughout the 2005-2006 academic year.
A SEES team lead by Paul Dimick and Andy Baker won the Fresh Ideas contest, organized by the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Water Works Association. The team was one of six teams invited to compete at the contest, which was held in conjunction with the Chapter's 57th Annual Conference.
The Fresh Ideas contest is open to young professionals, graduate and undergraduate students, and offers a forum to present innovative solutions to current water treatment and water resources problems. SEES presented an innovative arsenic removal technology developed at Lafayette College under co-advisor Arthur Kney, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. As the winning team, the Pennsylvania AWWA Chapter provided funding for one SEES member, Paul Dimick, to present the work at the National AWWA conference in San Francisco. Click here to see the club's winning poster, and check back for a report from Paul on the national conference.
Two SEES members presented research at the
2005 National Conference for Undergraduate Research
in Lexington, Virginia.
Paul Dimick presented work related to his honors thesis on using tailored polymeric ligand exchangers for removal of perchlorate, which is a rocket fuel and munitions byproduct currently being considered for regulation by the EPA.
Andy Baker presented the SEES group's research on arsenic removal using ferric iron enhanced activated alumina.
Both papers were accepted to the conference proceedings and can be viewed in the
Research
section.
A team of ten students representing eight departments placed second in the 2005 WERC International Environmental Engineering Design Contest. The team consisted of members of the student-founded Society of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (SEES), an organization established at Lafayette College to promote interdisciplinary collaborative research on environmental issues. The team presented a technology and design for removing arsenic from drinking water sources used by rural, isolated communities.
The WERC Contest began in 1991 to promote research focused on pertinent environmental issues. This contest is organized by a consortium of several New Mexico universities and Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. The contest this year, held in Las Cruces, New Mexico, hosted 33 institutions from across the United States, Canada and China. These schools competed in eight different sections, each section focused on a specific environmental issue. The SEES team competed with ten other institutions in the arsenic treatment section which was the largest of the eight possible tasks. The Lafayette team was the only group from a solely undergraduate institution and placed higher than many teams with doctoral students among their members.
The WERC Contest and the SEES club provided these students with a unique opportunity to utilize their classroom knowledge in the process of solving a current major environmental problem using innovative technologies. The technology used by the Lafayette SEES team was developed over the course of three years of research in the Environmental Engineering labs at Lafayette, through both the EXCEL program and an honors thesis. The SEES Club is sponsored by McLane Environmental, LLC, a firm that specializes in hydrogeological analysis and that recognizes the importance of promoting environmental consciousness and excellence in students.
In its first year, SEES has proven the caliber of Lafayette students to the worldwide environmental engineering design community, and continues to expand the breadth of its involvement in environmental research. SEES members are also presenting research at regional and national meetings of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the 2005 National Conference on Undergraduate Research , the 2005 Pennsylvania American Water Works Association conference, and the Joint Meeting of the 2nd International Conference on Green and Sustainable Chemistry and the 9th Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference in Washington, D.C., as well as conducting research at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY.
The SEES team was advised by Professors Arthur Kney (Civil Environmental Engineering), Samuel A. Morton, III (Chemical Engineering) and Steve Mylon (Chemistry), as well as Paul Dimick ('05 Chemical Engineering). The group consisted of Andy Baker ('06 Spanish, Environmental Engineering), Jenna Cellini ('06 Civil Environmental Engineering), Amanda Eggleston ('06 A.B. Engineering, Art), Katie Herchenroder ('06 Mechanical Engineering), Melissa Korpela ('06 Civil Environmental Engineering), Erik Person ('06 Geology), Katrin Przyuski ('05 Chemistry), Ebony Sterling ('05 A.B. Engineering) and Lee Vanzler ('07 Civil Environmental Engineering).
