International Research Experience for Students (IRES): Research on Water Technologies
1. Caryssa Joustra – Analysis of smart shelters for flood resilience
2. Suzie Boxman – Vegetated wall panels for treatment of greywater
3. Anh Do – Sulfate-reducing anaerobic MBR for treatment of gypsum waste leachate
4. Kristen Andre- Sulfate reducing inverse FBR for heavy metal removal from wastewater
5. Anton Dapcic – Natural sorbents for removal of heavy metals from water
6. Mari Gonzalez- Pretreatment in seawater RO desalination
INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH EXPERIENCE FOR STUDENTS (IRES) PROGRAM JOINTLY COORDINATED BY UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA (USF) AND UNESCO-IHE, INSTITUTE FOR WATER EDUCATION, DELFT, THE NETHERLANDS, SPONSORED BY U.S. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (NSF). http://usf-unesco-ihe.blogspot.com/
The EWRE seminar started off this past Monday with quick five-minute synopsis' from USF students who spent their summer doing research activities in Delft. Below is a synopsis of the speakers and their studies:
ReplyDeleteCaryssa's research focused around the planning and location of smart flood shelters, a novel idea in the Netherlands where engineered systems are assumed sufficient and shelters potentially a waste of time and space.
Suzie's studies on vegetated wall panels emphasized utilizing plant-systems to do dirty work on the vertical, but struggled with a lack of proper equipment throughout the summer.
Ahn and Kristen's work overlapped, both focusing on sulfate reduction in wastewater-treating bio-reactors; unfortunately Kristen was sick and could only be there in spirit!
Anton worked on absorption of heavy metal concentrations in water utilizing local, sustainable solutions, including coconut shells and waste metal oxides.
Mari's presentation focused on inherent difficulties of using reverse osmosis directly on seawater and the benefits of pre-treating the water to reduce membrane fouling.
Thank you to everyone that showed up, and I hope you join us again every Monday to hear from other exciting speakers!
To get a full sense of the importance of Caryssa's work, check out these websites which recount that the Netherlands suffered a Hurricane Katrina-magnitude storm flood disaster in 1953. The Dutch swore "never again" and built the most advanced coastal protection system known to humankind.
ReplyDeletehttp://newdirections.unt.edu/katrina/links/In%20Europe.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953
Anh's work was done strictly in a lab setting, but the idea of using sulfur-reducing bacteria to treat water has been tried in open systems, too. The link below shows a field trial for passively treating acid mine waste.
http://crustal.usgs.gov/projects/aqueous_geochemistry/field_calibration.html
I was curious on Suzie's walls. Would it be the walls themselves that achieve the filtration? Or was it soil? If it was the walls, what were they made from?
ReplyDelete