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Engineering graduates must be prepared to support our world’s need for a clean and sustainable energy future. Complex problems related to energy and sustainability require engineers to consider the broad spectrum of interrelated consequences including human and environmental health, sociopolitical, and economic factors. Teaching engineering students about energy within a societal context, simultaneous with developing technical knowledge and skills, will better prepare them to solve real-world problems. Yet few energy courses that approach energy topics from a human-centered perspective exist within engineering programs. Engineering students enrolled in energy programs often take such courses as supplemental to their course of study. This paper presents an engineering course that approaches energy education from a socio-technical perspective, emphasizing the complex interactions of energy technologies with sustainability dimensions. Course content and learning activities are structured around learning outcomes that require students to gain technical knowledge as well as an understanding of broader energy-related impacts. The course attracts students from a variety of majors and grade levels. A mixed quantitative/qualitative assessment conducted from 2019–2021 indicates successful achievement of course learning outcomes. Students demonstrated significant gains in technical content knowledge as well as the ability to critically address complex sociotechnical issues related to current and future energy systems.
Jan DeWaters; Susan Powers; Felicity Bilow. An Introductory Energy Course to Promote Broad Energy Education for Undergraduate Engineering Students. Sustainability 2021, 13, 9693 .
AMA StyleJan DeWaters, Susan Powers, Felicity Bilow. An Introductory Energy Course to Promote Broad Energy Education for Undergraduate Engineering Students. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (17):9693.
Chicago/Turabian StyleJan DeWaters; Susan Powers; Felicity Bilow. 2021. "An Introductory Energy Course to Promote Broad Energy Education for Undergraduate Engineering Students." Sustainability 13, no. 17: 9693.
Engineers must take a leading role in addressing the challenges of mitigating climate change and adapting to the inevitable changes that our world is facing. To improve climate literacy, technical education must include problem formulation and solutions that consider complex interactions between engineered, Earth, and societal systems, including trade-offs among benefits, costs, and risks. Improving engineering students’ climate literacy must also inspire students’ motivation to work toward climate solutions. This paper highlights the content and pedagogical approach used in a class for engineering students that helped contribute to significant gains in engineering students’ climate literacy and critical thinking competencies. A total of 89 students fully participated in a pre/post climate literacy questionnaire over four years of study. As a whole, students demonstrated significant gains in climate-related content knowledge, affect, and behavior. Substantial differences were observed between students in different engineering disciplines and male vs. female students. Assessment of critical thinking showed that students did an excellent job formulating problem statements and solutions in a manner that incorporated a multidimensional systems perspective. These skills are critical for students to address climate change effectively in their eventual professions.
Susan E. Powers; Jan E. DeWaters; Suresh Dhaniyala. Climate Literacy—Imperative Competencies for Tomorrow’s Engineers. Sustainability 2021, 13, 9684 .
AMA StyleSusan E. Powers, Jan E. DeWaters, Suresh Dhaniyala. Climate Literacy—Imperative Competencies for Tomorrow’s Engineers. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (17):9684.
Chicago/Turabian StyleSusan E. Powers; Jan E. DeWaters; Suresh Dhaniyala. 2021. "Climate Literacy—Imperative Competencies for Tomorrow’s Engineers." Sustainability 13, no. 17: 9684.
Building energy simulation (BES) tools fail to capture diversity among occupants’ consumption behaviors by using simple and generic occupancy and load profiles, causing uncertainties in simulation predictions. Thus, generating actual occupancy profiles can lead to more accurate and reliable BES predictions. In this article, occupancy profiles for apartment-style student housing are presented from high-resolution monitored occupancy data. A geo-fencing app was designed and installed on the cellphones of 41 volunteer students living in student housing buildings on Clarkson University's campus. Occupants’ entering and exiting activities were recorded every minute from February 4 to May 10, 2018. Recorded events were sorted out for each individual by the date and time of day considering 1 for ‘entered’ events and 0 for ‘exited’ events to show the probability of presence at each time of day. Accounting for excluded days (234 days with errors and uncertainties), 1,096 daily occupancy observations were retained in the dataset. Two methods were used to analyze the dataset and derive weekday and weekend occupancy schedules. A simple averaging method and K-means clustering techniques were performed [1]. This article provides the input datasets that were used for analysis as well as the outputs of both methods. Occupancy schedules are presented separately for each day of a week, weekdays, and weekend days. To show differences in students’ occupancy patterns, occupancy schedules in 7 clusters for weekdays and 3 clusters for weekend days are provided. These datasets can be beneficial for modelers and researchers for either using provided occupancy schedules in BES tools or understanding occupant behaviors in student housing.
Leila Nikdel; Alan E.S. Schay; Daqing Hou; Susan E. Powers. Datasets for occupancy profiles in apartment-style student housing for occupant behavior studies and application in building energy simulation. Data in Brief 2021, 37, 107205 .
AMA StyleLeila Nikdel, Alan E.S. Schay, Daqing Hou, Susan E. Powers. Datasets for occupancy profiles in apartment-style student housing for occupant behavior studies and application in building energy simulation. Data in Brief. 2021; 37 ():107205.
Chicago/Turabian StyleLeila Nikdel; Alan E.S. Schay; Daqing Hou; Susan E. Powers. 2021. "Datasets for occupancy profiles in apartment-style student housing for occupant behavior studies and application in building energy simulation." Data in Brief 37, no. : 107205.
A life cycle assessment (LCA) of feminine hygiene products was completed with three samples considered representative of sanitary pads, tampons and menstrual cups. Gabi LCA software was used to organize inventory data with the ILCD (v.1.0.10) life cycle impact assessment method used to determine mid-point and normalized impact scores. Data from the ecoinvent database, and literature were used to complete the assessment. The dataset includes product details (mass and materials), life cycle inventory (LCI) data and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results for all mass and energy flows. Hait and Powers [1] used the data in a comparative LCA.
Amy Hait; Susan E. Powers. Dataset: Feminine hygiene product lifecycle inventory and impact assessment. Data in Brief 2019, 28, 104851 .
AMA StyleAmy Hait, Susan E. Powers. Dataset: Feminine hygiene product lifecycle inventory and impact assessment. Data in Brief. 2019; 28 ():104851.
Chicago/Turabian StyleAmy Hait; Susan E. Powers. 2019. "Dataset: Feminine hygiene product lifecycle inventory and impact assessment." Data in Brief 28, no. : 104851.
New options for feminine hygiene products could greatly reduce solid waste impacts and have other environmental benefits. As a group of widely used but rarely examined consumer products, feminine hygiene products offer great potential for impact reduction if alternative products are used or conventional products improved. Through a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of three menstrual products: disposable tampons and sanitary pads, and reusable menstrual cups, this study details the mid-point impacts of each product. Data from the Ecoinvent database and literature were used to complete the assessment. Disposable tampons and sanitary pads had far greater impacts across each category than the re-useable menstrual cup. Between the two disposable options, sanitary pads were the most impactful product, though the quantitative differences between the two disposable products is within uncertainty associated with variable use habits among women. The use of wood pulp as a component of the absorbent material in sanitary pads has substantial benefit for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, that benefit is coupled with increased toxicity, mostly due to the potential for dioxin generation during bleaching. For tampons, removing the applicator from the product substantially reduced several of the impacts and generally made them a better choice than a sanitary pad. The impacts of the reusable menstrual cup used for one year were less than 1.5% the environmental impacts of the disposable products and approximately only 10% of the cost. Thereby clearly demonstrating the overall value of the reusable option in a class of highly used and important consumer products.
Amy Hait; Susan E. Powers. The value of reusable feminine hygiene products evaluated by comparative environmental life cycle assessment. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 2019, 150, 104422 .
AMA StyleAmy Hait, Susan E. Powers. The value of reusable feminine hygiene products evaluated by comparative environmental life cycle assessment. Resources, Conservation and Recycling. 2019; 150 ():104422.
Chicago/Turabian StyleAmy Hait; Susan E. Powers. 2019. "The value of reusable feminine hygiene products evaluated by comparative environmental life cycle assessment." Resources, Conservation and Recycling 150, no. : 104422.
This research is aimed at monetizing the life cycle environmental and health externalities associated with production of ethanol from corn, corn stover, switchgrass, and forest residue. The results of this study reveal current average external costs for the production of 1 l of ethanol ranged from $0.07 for forest residue to $0.57 for ethanol production from corn. Among the various feedstocks, the external costs of PM10, NOX, and PM2.5 are among the greatest contributors to these costs. The combustion of fossil fuels in upstream fertilizer and energy production processes is the primary source of these emissions and their costs, especially for corn ethanol. The combined costs of emissions associated with the production and use of nitrogen fertilizer also contribute substantially to the net external costs. For cellulosic ethanol production, the combustion of waste lignin to generate heat and power helps to keep the external costs lower than corn ethanol. Credits both for the biogenic carbon combustion and displacement of grid electricity by exporting excess electricity substantially negate many of the emissions and external costs. External costs associated with greenhouse gas emissions were not significant. However, adding estimates of indirect GHG emissions from land use changes would nearly double corn ethanol cost estimates.
Jamil M. Kusiima; Susan E. Powers. Monetary value of the environmental and health externalities associated with production of ethanol from biomass feedstocks. Energy Policy 2010, 38, 2785 -2796.
AMA StyleJamil M. Kusiima, Susan E. Powers. Monetary value of the environmental and health externalities associated with production of ethanol from biomass feedstocks. Energy Policy. 2010; 38 (6):2785-2796.
Chicago/Turabian StyleJamil M. Kusiima; Susan E. Powers. 2010. "Monetary value of the environmental and health externalities associated with production of ethanol from biomass feedstocks." Energy Policy 38, no. 6: 2785-2796.
Mathematical models for soil water retention characteristic [h(θ)] and unsaturated conductivity function [K(θ)] from particle-size distribution (PSD) and bulk density data are indirect and empirical approaches to estimate these hydraulic functions. Often times, mathematical models are fit to sparse PSD data sets to provide the input for h(θ) and K(θ) functions. The objective of this study was to determine whether the choice of a particular mathematical model to represent the continuous PSD significantly affects the predicted soil hydraulic properties. We considered four PSD models with between one and four fitting parameters. For most of the soils, the one-parameter Jaky model for generating PSD input, resulted in the best estimate of soil hydraulic properties. This finding indicates that the linear relationship between the PSD and the void-size distribution (VSD) (or between particle volume and pore volume) defined by the AP model would be not appropriate for most soils. This result suggests that the nonlinear relationship between the PSD and the VSD of the Jaky model would more appropriate. The PSD generated by other models provided better input to the h(θ) and K(θ) functions for clay soils. Copyright © 2003. Soil Science Society. Published in Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J.67:1103–1112.
Sang Il Hwang; Susan E. Powers. Using Particle‐Size Distribution Models to Estimate Soil Hydraulic Properties. Soil Science Society of America Journal 2003, 67, 1103 -1112.
AMA StyleSang Il Hwang, Susan E. Powers. Using Particle‐Size Distribution Models to Estimate Soil Hydraulic Properties. Soil Science Society of America Journal. 2003; 67 (4):1103-1112.
Chicago/Turabian StyleSang Il Hwang; Susan E. Powers. 2003. "Using Particle‐Size Distribution Models to Estimate Soil Hydraulic Properties." Soil Science Society of America Journal 67, no. 4: 1103-1112.
An accurate mathematical representation of particle-size distributions (PSDs) is required to estimate soil hydraulic properties or to compare texture measurements from different classification systems. The objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of seven models (i.e., five lognormal models, the Gompertz model, and the Fredlund model) to fit PSD data sets from a wide range of soil textures. Special attention was given to the effect of texture on model performance. Several criteria were used to determine the optimum model with the least number of fitting parameters when other conditions are equal. The Fredlund model with four parameters showed the best performance with the majority of soils studied, even when three criteria that impose a penalty for additional fitting parameters were used. Especially, the relative performance of the Fredlund model in regard to other models increased with increase of clay content. Among all soil classes, the lognormal models with two or three parameters showed better fits for silty clay, silty clay loam, and silt loam soils, and worse fit for sandy clay loam soil. Copyright © 2002. Soil Science Society. Published in Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J.66:1143–1150.
Sang Il Hwang; Kwang Pyo Lee; Dong Soo Lee; Susan E. Powers. Models for Estimating Soil Particle‐Size Distributions. Soil Science Society of America Journal 2002, 66, 1143 -1150.
AMA StyleSang Il Hwang, Kwang Pyo Lee, Dong Soo Lee, Susan E. Powers. Models for Estimating Soil Particle‐Size Distributions. Soil Science Society of America Journal. 2002; 66 (4):1143-1150.
Chicago/Turabian StyleSang Il Hwang; Kwang Pyo Lee; Dong Soo Lee; Susan E. Powers. 2002. "Models for Estimating Soil Particle‐Size Distributions." Soil Science Society of America Journal 66, no. 4: 1143-1150.
Direct pumping and enhanced recovery of coal tar and creosote dense, non-aqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs) from the subsurface have had mixed results because these DNAPLs are viscous fluids that can potentially alter aquifer wettability. To improve the inefficiencies associated with waterflooding, the research presented here considered the use of a polymer solution that can be added to the injected flood solution to increase the viscosity and decrease the velocity of the flooding solution. Results from one-dimensional, vertically oriented laboratory column experiments that evaluate the recovery of coal-derived DNAPL with both water and polymer flooding solutions are presented. The final DNAPL saturation remaining in the column was assessed in water and oil-wet systems for three viscous DNAPLs. Adding polymer to increase the aqueous solution viscosity did not have a significant impact in water-wet systems. A final DNAPL saturation of approximately 19% was achieved for both water and polymer floods. In contrast, the addition of polymer significantly improved recovery in oil-wet systems. The final saturation was over 40% in oil-wet systems after waterflooding, but approximately 19% with a polymer flushing solution. Although the final saturation produced with polymer flooding was similar between the oil- and water-wet systems, differences in the relative permeability and distribution of DNAPL in the porous matrix caused the DNAPL recovery to be much slower in the oil-wet system.
Steven W Giese; Susan E Powers. Using polymer solutions to enhance recovery of mobile coal tar and creosote DNAPLs. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology 2002, 58, 147 -167.
AMA StyleSteven W Giese, Susan E Powers. Using polymer solutions to enhance recovery of mobile coal tar and creosote DNAPLs. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology. 2002; 58 (1-2):147-167.
Chicago/Turabian StyleSteven W Giese; Susan E Powers. 2002. "Using polymer solutions to enhance recovery of mobile coal tar and creosote DNAPLs." Journal of Contaminant Hydrology 58, no. 1-2: 147-167.