Story Ben Scheer
Artistic renderings of a train engine and a clock stand before an engineering building on the NMSU campus, where students have been preparing for competition. (Photo by Ben Scheer)
A water pump engine whines loudly in the ears of the students who are voluntarily tethered to it. It emits an eardrum-piercing hiss reminiscent of an occasion when you are drifting away on your couch only to be summoned back to full consciousness by a band saw-operating neighbor, ripping into numerous two-by-fours to build a deck adjacent to your own backyard.
The grinding hiss belongs to a water distillation device housed in the college of engineering.
For months, a disparate group at New Mexico State University has worked through a problem whose solution is designed to help the environment. According to the group, the device takes the current amount of water needed for a sample – about 10 liters – and concentrates it to 10 milliliters with the original bacterial count intact.
Why they do it
Practically, this will allow for portable, in field sampling and would be hopefully desirable to the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the like.
A group of student engineers work out the numbers together. (Photo by Ben Scheer)
On March 29, the team will present its creation to a panel of judges – a group comprised of industry professionals and representatives gathered every year for the last 20 at the Pan American Center. The event is the 20th International Environmental Design Contest.
The group whose device is deemed the best will receive $2,500 per group and other tangible prizes via IEDC sponsors-Food and Drug Administration, State of New Mexico, Intel and others. There are other, less tangible advantages to spending months bearing the time and toil it takes to form oral, written and physical presentations of environment-assisting mechanisms.
“It’s a networking thing for us,” Brekke Van Slyke, the NMSU team leader, said. “We can talk to people from Intel and other places. It’s an opportunity for us to show off.”
Van Slyke didn’t seem to have any reservations about working through spring break. She seemed to think the opportunities inherent to the IEDC would make up for any lost-party opportunities.
“They bring in industry experts from all over who judge the presentation. It’s kind of like a professional review,” Van Slyke said.
Who’s at work
The volunteers from NMSU: a group of about a dozen engineering undergraduates who are hard at work in the days leading up to the 2010 IEDC– which happens to occur in the waning days of spring break..
More than six months ago, WERC, a consortium for environmental education and technology development, presented students from around the world with a series of tasks – the answers to which may have the power to change the world.
Some past prizes presented at IEDCs (Photo by Ben Scheer)
If the local design team is successful, it could have a big effect locally. According to the Executive Director of WERC, Abbas Ghassemi, who holds a doctorate degree, the task the NMSU students chose to tackle was to develop “a portable siphon unit to concentrate pond water and bacteria into a more manageable sample.”
That is one of four problems, whose solutions will ultimately be presented at the end of March when science and engineering students worldwide will try to solve a few of the world’s woes.
Other tasks include:
• creating a photovoltaic system performance indicator (a component in solar energy systems)
• reduction of direct greenhouse gas emissions from a mine
• a green osmosis treatment system
Opening ceremonies begin today, and the event will culminate on March 30 with a concert featuring Albuquerque rockers Asper Kourt, which maybe a nice treat for the students who denied themselves spring break in favor of a highly industrious last week of March. The band did win in the“Best Local Band Headed for Stardom” category in Albequerque the Magazine, December 2009.
