WATER SUSTAINABILITY

Joel Croce Berk Basar Matthew Cheung Nishant Gaddam 4/26/2013 Team 8 Abstract
The goal of this design project was to design a more sustainable campus that will save the campus and environment energy, water, food, and transportation costs. The campus already uses natural gas buses to transport students around campus, but there are many other unsustainable parts of this campus. The project allowed us to choose between a system or subsystem to redesign. We chose to redesign the entire water system that the campus uses. We found a solution by the processes of benchmarking, patent search, literature review, and concept generation. Researching where most of the campuses water comes from lead us to the idea that the bathrooms are a large part of that amount. The solution was redesigning each dorm bathroom. This means redesigning every appliance including the toilets, urinals, and showers to save as much water as possible. The final designs save the campus nearly 350,000 gallons of water per day and meet the requirements of this project. The designs use less water and recycle water for different appliances to minimize the excess water used by students on campus.

1.0 Introduction
Seimens provided the task of designing a more sustainable campus to all the engineering design groups. This project looks into aspects of energy, water, food, and transportation. The project will be to redesign certain aspects of the campus that are unsustainable. Each team had to choose between a subsystem or system to redesign. We as a group decided towards redesigning the water system for the entire campus. We first had to research the campuss water system as it stands today to assess how much water the campus is using. We then looked into alternatives involving all of the appliances in dorm bathrooms because this is where most of the water usage originates. We benchmarked other possibilities and generated a few concepts to find our final design. The outline of our report begins with Section 2 which is our problem statement that will state the problem at hand and how we plan on fixing it. Section 3 of the project is our research stage. This includes a literature review, patent search, and external search. All is done to generate a background and lead us into the right direction. Section 4 introduces our design objectives, which will then lead into section 5, which includes our concepts and benchmarking of other alternatives. Section 6 is our final design and implementation plans. We will describe our final design along with show our implementation plans for all of our designs. To conclude the report section 7 is our conclusion which will obviously conclude our project and our successes.

2.0 Problem Statement

Currently, University Park uses approximately 3-4 million gallons of water daily. This usage sources from showers, sinks, toilets, urinals, fountains, and irrigation. Our goal is to make the campus more sustainable by reducing the amount of water usage, recycling the water, and increasing the water input. We decided that to effectively make the campus more sustainable we would need to search the areas that uses water the most. These areas mainly include dorm bathrooms and all the appliances involved. The current status of the bathrooms consists of high-powered showerheads, non-sustainable toilets, and wasteful urinals. We started by analyzing each appliance to figure out how to minimize the amount of water used daily. Looking at the showerhead, we found that each showerhead produces approximately 2.5 gallons per minute of water. The toilets approximately produce 3-5 gallons per flush. The urinals approximately produce 2 gallons per flush. With 13,000 students living in dorms, the amount of water is excessive. We need to find alternatives, affordable replacements, and concepts to minimize the amount of water used.

3.0 External Search

We chose to investigate our current bathroom appliances to see how they work and how sustainable they are. This is helpful to understand how the campuses water system works and how we can change it to make it more sustainable.
Showers: We took a look at the showerheads used in our bathrooms and decided that they were high powered and not efficient. Toilets: The toilets in our bathrooms use the maximum amount of water and are high powered meaning that they use at least 4 gallons. Urinals: There are not as many urinals on campus and they all seem to use the standard two gallons per flush in each dorm.

3.1 Literature Review

Waterless urinals basically all work the same way. Urine flows through the collection bowl past the strainer into an oil based liquid. Because the urine is denser than the oil, the urine flows through the oil, which prevents the odor. The urine then goes into the waste pipe that then sends the urine to the regular plumbing system. Grey water systems recycle water from appliances and reuse this water for other appliances. The shower water can be used for toilet tanks and this will be safe because this water is not in contact with our bodies. Changing showerheads from 2.5 gallons per minute to 1.5 gallons per minute can save a university hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This is because the use of water in a university is very large scale.

3.2 Patent Search

We researched patents on both waterless urinals and recycling water systems. The patents are separated into function and art. Table 1. Art-Function Matrix for Waterless urinals
FUNCTION Main body Urinal apparatus Removable cartridge Conversion Assembly Odor Trap
EP 2201189 A1 EP 1657370 A3 US 8398962 B2 US 20120233753 A1 EP 1247910 B1

ART Drain Unit

One way Valve

Washout Channel

P-trap

4.0 Design Objective

The external search allowed us to recognize the problems with water usage on campus. Most of the Universitys water comes from dorm bathrooms and our goal is to make every bathroom more sustainable. The showers, toilets, and urinals make up most of the water usage combined. The showers on campus allow 3 gallons of water per minute. We plan on making this much more sustainable by cutting the amount of water per minute that each showerhead produces. Each flush of a urinal drains 2 gallons of water on average. Our goal is to make this more sustainable by implementing different urinals that dont drain as much water. Each flush of a toilet drains 4 gallons of water on average. With all 13,000 students on campus, this can drain thousands of gallons of water per day. Even changing the toilets the slightest bit will save a large sum of water. We plan on looking into different less expensive alternatives and the possibility of recycling to reduce the amount of water used. Central Pennsylvania gets a considerable amount of rain in the fall and spring seasons. Our goal is to harness this water either from the street or from the rooftops and use it for the campus. This will increase the water input for the campus thus making it more sustainable.

5.0 Methodology
We have a considerable amount of options that could be implemented. We stem from waterless urinals to a whole new shower swipe system that could save countless gallons of water per year. We need to test all of these concepts with what is already in place on campus and compare to see if these are even possible.

5.1 Concept Generation

Reducing water usage: Waterless urinals: There are 7,000 males on campus that use each urinal approximately twice a day. This amounts to 27,000 gallons of water drained from urinals. Our implementation would cost a great deal of money but would save up to 27,000 gallons of water per day. Swipe System: This system would work much like the laundry system at Penn State. It would consist of one main swipe system that each person would use with numbers pertaining to each shower stall. You would swipe and then pick a number for which stall you would want to use. The stall would then unlock and you could enter. This system would require shower points that can be purchased outside of your one main price for living in the dorms. Censored Sinks: This idea does save water because some people abuse the normal sinks when shaving etc Shower Heads: The showerheads now produce up to 3 gallons of water per minute. Installing new showerheads that only produce 1.5 gallons per minute could reduce this. This would save thousands of gallons of water per day if we cut the flow by half. Another concept idea would be timed showerheads. This means that after 15 minutes, the water flow would then be cut.

5.1.1 Concept Generation Table

This is a concept generation table for different alternative showerheads. Our focus is on concept 1. The concept has a small showerhead that increases the power output of water flow but has a shut off system installed after a certain amount of time.

Head type small large large small

Power output strong weak strong weak

Shut-off yes no no yes

5.1.1 Concept sketches

These are two concept sketches for the water recycling system. Concept 1 has a water collection tank that collects the shower water and then pushes the water into a tube that eventually splits into two. One of the tubes funnels the water into the toilet tank while the other tube flows the water into the normal plumbing system to prevent overflow.

5.2 Benchmarking
We decided to benchmark different types of urinals to see which would be most sustainable for the campus. We researched two waterless urinals and two urinals much like what the campus uses currently. We found that the waterless urinals are the most profitable because they dont use any water and the urinals currently use two gallons. We also decided to benchmark showerheads to see the result from that. We researched 3 sustainable showerheads and one showerhead like we currently use. The shut-off shower head was most sustainable and proved most profitable.

Table 2. Benchmarking for Four products

Feature Efficiency Monthly Unit Cost Water usage Economical ROI Evaluation NPV IRR Overall Ranking Sloan,wes-500 waterless urinal 5 3 5 5 4 5 1 Lynbrook,GPF urinal 4 4 3 3 4 4 3 Washbrook,GPF urinal 5 3 3 3 3 4 4 Steward,waterless wall-mount 4 3 5 5 5 5 2

These are visuals of the urinals benchmarked. The Sloan wes-500 urinal is by far the most sustainable compared to the other three.

Sloan wes-500 waterless urinal

Lynbrook GPF urinal

Washbrook GPF urinal

Steward waterless wall-mount

Table 3. Benchmarking of four showerheads

Feature Efficiency Monthly Unit Cost Water usage Economical ROI Evaluation NPV IRR Overall Ranking Waxman full 1-spray showerhead 3 2 3 4 3 3 4 VBE-423 showerhead 4 4 5 5 3 4 2 Danco 89171 shutoff showerhead 5 4 5 5 4 5 1 FloWise showerhead 4 5 4 4 4 4 3

6.0 Final Design and Implementation Plans

Through the process of benchmarking and grading each concept, we found our final designs. There are three designs for reducing water usage and the other design is for increasing the water input for the campus. The implementation plans will be inexpensive and simple taking a few weeks to a month. The money saved from these plans will far exceed the expenses of implementation. These designs will help reduce the water usage and increase the water input thus making the campus more sustainable.

6.1 Final Design

Our final design consists of three parts: reducing water usage, recycling, and increasing water input.
Reducing water usage: Waterless urinals: This idea would mean replacing every urinal in campus dorms to waterless urinals. These urinals dispose of urine without the use of water. The urine flows down the bowl of the urinal past a debris catching strainer. The urine then flows through oil based sealing liquid that is less dense than urine. The sealing liquid also blocks any odor from the urine. The urine then flows to the waste pipe that goes to the regular plumbing system. This saves the campus thousands of gallons each day and therefore hundreds of dollars. Recycling water system: This system would be implemented to recycle shower water which then would be funnelled into the toilets. The shower water would flow into a tank that then disperses into a tube that flows into the toilet system that Penn State uses. To prevent overflow, the excess water, (after the toilet tanks are filled), would flow into the regular plumbing system. Water reducing showerheads: These showerheads reduce the amount of water flow from 3 gallons per minute to 1.5 gallons per minute. The showerhead would be smaller which would increase the power of the flow. These showerheads minimize the space that the water has to go through which would disperse the water better while decreasing the amount of water that goes through.

Increasing water input: Harnessing rainwater: Placing gutters and water drainage pipes on each building in Penn State could store the water in tanks underneath the ground that could then be used for toilets or urinals in buildings. The water would flow into water tanks underneath the ground that would be connected to the water source used for urinals and toilets. This wouldnt cost a large sum of money and could save the campus gallons of water.

6.2 Implementation Plans

Harnessing rainwater: To replace gutters and drainage pipes on all the buildings in Penn State would take a few months. The water tanks would then take a few more months and could be costly. The amount of water saved per inch of rain using this system could easily pay for these expenses within a few years. Showerheads: Replacing showerheads would not be expensive for the campus because they could buy them in bulk. The cost of the showerheads would quickly offset if the amount of water saved was half. The process could be completed in the summer when most of the dorms are not in use to prevent confusion with the students. Waterless urinals: The cost of implementing the waterless urinals is upwards of $100,000. The saving of $180 per day would take approximately 500 days to offset this cost. The urinals could be installed during any semester without interruption and the previous urinals can be recycled properly. Water recycling system: The cost of implementing this will be very high. This would mean completely redesigning every bathroom in the dorms on campus. It would need to be done during the summer months because it will interrupt the students otherwise. The system will be interconnected with each bathroom either above or below depending on the building.

7.0 Conclusion
Through the process of: benchmarking, concept generation, and external search, we designed a better more sustainable campus. Our design will save the campus thousands of gallons of water each year while inputting water that the campus has not seen before. The recycling system will be very difficult to implement mainly because of the cost to reconstruct. That being said our design will make the campus more sustainable but the actual cost of implementation might be next to impossible. The sustainable showerheads, however, will reduce the amount of shower water by half and is very easy to implement. The waterless urinals are very unique and very easily implemented virtually eliminating the use for the urinals used currently. We completed this project with new ideas that will completely reconstruct the water system that Penn State uses today and we look at our project as a success.

References
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(VBE-423) EcoFlow Low Flow Shower Head - Chrome. (n.d.). Flossers, Sonic Toothbrush, Shower Heads, Faucets, Neti Pot | Waterpik. Retrieved April 25, 2013, from http://www.waterpik.com/shower-head/products/fixedmount/ecoflow/VBE-423

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Retrieved April 25, 2013, http://beingsustainable.webs.com/showerhead-efficiency from

3. Greywater Action | For a sustainable water culture. (n.d.). Home | Greywater

Action. Retrieved April 25, 2013, from http://greywateraction.org/greywaterrecycling

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Ziger/Snead Architects. Retrieved April 25, 2013, from http://www.zigersnead.com/current/blog/post/waterless-urinals-how-dothey-work

5. Patent US20120233753 - Waterless Urinal Conversion Assembly - Google

Patents. (n.d.). Google. Retrieved April 25, 2013, from http://www.google.com/patents/US20120233753?dq=waterless+urinal+pate nts&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zI95Ufb8ILTO0QHgy4F4&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAQ