Conference explores sustainable energy

The southeastern chapter conference of Engineers Without Borders took place over the weekend. The participants of the conference discussed water treatment methods, sustainable energy source and concrete mix designs.

Held at the Molecular Science & Engineering building on Ferst Drive and hosted by the campus chapter of the national organization, Engineering Students Without Borders at Georgia Tech (ESWB), the event featured a number of prominent speakers and covered a range of topics related to development and engineering.

Speakers ranged from public health experts from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), construction consultants from CH2M Hill, and Tech's very own sustainable energy researchers.

Ann Marie Spextet, an Atlanta-based professional water treatment consultant, presented on low cost, low-tech water treatment options for the rural poor in developing countries.

She explained that most common sources for those who do not have immediate access to clean water include open channels such as rivers, drainage ditches, and sewage outlets and that simple low-cost technologies are indeed available that fit the budget limitations of rural development projects.

Sam Shelton, director of the Strategic Energy Initiative and a professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, introduced the kind of research into sustainable energy sources happening on campus. He spoke about the economic prospects for all countries that could obtain reliable energy supplies by harvesting some locally plentiful resource, as is the case for corn in the state of Iowa and pulpwood in Georgia.

Shelton also spoke about the possibilities for sustainability by conserving energy from conventional sources. "What we try to do [at Tech] is perform technology assessments to determine what the high impact technologies that will save energy are. We try to identify high-impact, near-term technologies and put together the expertise on campus [to implement them], which is always multi-disciplinary: the chemists, mechanical engineers, economists and policy advisors," Shelton said.Reflecting what some see as a wider trend of growing social consciousness among college students, the conference was very well attended by professionals in the field and interested students from other regional universities like FSU and Duke.

According to Matthew Madden, president of ESWB and one of the organizers of the event, more people showed up to participate in the conference than were expected. "We were told by the national organization (EWB) to expect around thirty-five people in attendance and planned for that, but the actual number of attendees was more than double that. Most of the extras were students who didn't register but showed up anyway," Madden said.

Madden also believes that events such as these are great opportunities to not only network and coordinate efforts between universities on student projects in engineering development, but to learn about past mistakes from each other's work.

"Our members have just finished planning a project to build a water sanitation tower for a rural community in Honduras and we've learned a lot from changes that were made to our design by professors and industry professionals reviewing it.

"Now, if the students at Florida State want to do a similar project, for example, they can come to us to get a lot of useful information about what to do, " Madden said.