EXHIBIT OPENING DAY

The Energy-Net Summer Session comes to a close with the opening of the team's new exhibit,

"The Energy Water Nexus: Watt About It?"

Energy-Net Summer Session Final Week

Summer Session, Week 12

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

For the past few weeks, the Energy-Net teens have been working hard at designing an exhibit for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and then bringing it to life through the creation of graphics and activities. The blog has been quiet during this process in order to keep the majority of the exhibit a surprise.

Now, we are happy to announce the title of our new exhibit:

"The Water Energy Nexus: Watt About It?"

The Energy-Net team would like to invite you and your family to the grand opening of our new exhibit on Saturday, August 31st at 1pm. Admission is free for up to 4 people with a printed flyer.

Week 8, July 25 and 26, Powdermill and Ohiopyle Camping Trip

On Thursday, July 25, we arrived early in the morning to pack our vans and leave the museum behind for CMNH's sister site, Powdermill nature reserve, and some other sites of interest on the way.

Our first stop was Valley School of Ligonier, PA. The school features a water wheel built on a creek near the school, which at one point in time was used to generate power for the nearby buildings. The creek was partially dammed, and the water directed so that its movement would cause the water wheel to rotate under its flow. At one point, the wheel was removed. Today, it is restored to its original place, but is purely for decoration on Valley School's grounds.

Next, we took a road trip over to Rolling Rock farms of Rector, PA. A Califonia iron furnace built in the mid-1800s still sits in the woods by Rolling Rock. Its location in the woods might seem a strange place to build an iron furnace, but there are very specific reasons as to why it was. The furnace itself is build close to a hill that is about level with the furnace's top. To its left, there sits a creek that had been redirected in the past to flow to a water wheel. The rotation of the wheel then caused a stoker to move up and down, inflating and deflating the bellows, which continuously supplied air to the burning fuel within the furnace, causing the temperature to rise. The fuel used in the iron furnace was wood, of which there was a great supply in the immediate area. Here, we stopped to do some water sample testing and eat lunch. RESULTS TO COME.

From there, we headed to Powdermill Nature Reserve's visitor's center, where we toured the Marsh Machine. Below, there is a video that explains how it collects waste water from the facility's bathrooms, and cleans it using no chemicals, just natural processes.

Next, we took a trip over to some acid mine drainage remediation ponds near the vistor's center. We tested the first pond and the last pond only, to see just how well these ponds clean the water that flows through them. RESULTS TO COME.

Our last stop of the day was to our cabin, Raven's Roost, at Powdermill Nature Reserve. There was a campfire, games, and of course, s'mores.

The next morning, only a few braved Powdermill's bird banding tour while the rest still slept. There, we learned how "mist nets" are used to capture birds early in the morning and they fitted with bands that each have a unique ID number, before being released. The bird banding program at Powdermill is focused on bird migration, and birds banded at Powdermill have been recaptured as far south as Peru and other parts of South America!

Later that day came the moment everyone was waiting for - Whitewater Rafting! The Energy-Net team braved 7.2 miles of the (mid-) Youghiogheny River in the Ohiopyle State Park to experience first-hand just how powerful water can be.

All photos from our trip can be viewed here

Week 6, July 18 2013, Water Sample Testing

Summer Session, Week 6

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Our water testing kit has finally arrived in the mail. So far, we had collected 8 water samples.

The full list of samples is below:

1. Phipps Run stream at GPS location N 40°26'16.1" W 079°56'45.60" (June 18 2013)
2. Panther Hollow stream at GPS location N 40°26'11.6" W 079°56'43.40" (June 18 2013)
3. Presque Isle, Lake Erie at GPS location N 44°40'47.8" W 081°01'88.50" (July 5 2013)
4. East Springfield, well water, at GPS location N 42°08'67.8" W 080°08'26.50" (July 6 2013)
5. East Springfield, Lake Erie, at GPS location N 42°00'23.00" W 080°26'46.40" (July 6 2013)
6. East Springfield, Elk Creek, at GPS location N 42°01'32.00" W 080°22'48.70" (July 6 2013)
7. East Springfield, Elk Creek, at GPS location N 41°59'51.60" W 080°1907.40" (July 6 2013)
8. Ocean City, Maryland

(Position formats for all sites are hddd°mm'ss.s" , Map Datum WGS 84, Map Spheroid WGS 84)

We then took these 8 samples and tested them for: dissolved oxygen, chlorine, nitrate, phosphate, turbidity, ammonia nitrogen, and pH.

Results:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Dissolved Oxygen	3.9 ppm 26%saturation	6.4 ppm 50% sat.	7.2 ppm 60% sat.	7.2 ppm 60% sat.	7.6 ppm 62% sat.	7.2 ppm 60% sat.	6.4 ppm 50% sat.	6.6 ppm 52% sat.
Chlorine	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	<0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm
Nitrate	< 1 ppm	1 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	0.2 ppm	0.4 ppm	0.4 ppm	0.6 ppm
Phosphate	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm	< 0.2 ppm
Turbidity	0 JTU	2.5 JTU	0 JTU	5 JTU	0 JTU	3 JTU	5 JTU	0 JTU
Ammonia Nitrogen	1 ppm	2 ppm	0 ppm	1 ppm	1 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm	1 ppm
pH	6.5	6.5	6.5	5.5	6.5	6	6.5	6.5

Week 5, July 9 2013, Trip to NRG Cheswick Power Plant

Summer Session, Week 5

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The NRG Cheswick Power Plant is 1 of the NRG's 800 power plants nation-wide. It is coal-fired, like many of the power plants in Pennsylvania and the surrounding states. However, in states like Pennsylvania, which have deregulated energy industries, the consumer is free to choose which company provides their electricity. [If you are a PA resident interested in researching what this means for you, visit PAPowerSwitch.com]

Our guide, Kevin, explained that when it comes to coal-fired electricity generation, there is not a high rate of job growth, and that the Cheswick site only employs 103 people. However, because of certain laws and regulations placed on the energy industry, the company utilizes third-party consulting firms to prevent fines and penalties, and the market has been growing for these firms.

This particular plant supplies about 570 MW of electricity in a year. The coal used is delivered from the West Virginia pan handle via river barge on the Allegheny River, and the plant burns 5-6 of these barges daily. Those 5-6 barges produce 500-600 tons of ash a day. Burying it in a landfill owned by the company is a last resort. Instead, the ash is often given to concrete companies as additive.

To generate electricity, only a few materials are required: conductive wire, magnets, and relative motion between the two. With coal-fired electricity generation, coal is burned as a fuel to heat water into steam, then the steam is used to turn a turbine which creates a fast-spinning relative motion between the two. This causes electrons to move from + to - , one way, creating electricity.

All forms of fuel work in basically this same way, from coal, oil and natural gas to nuclear, wind and hydroelectric. All rely on the burning of a fuel to turn water into steam in order to turn a turbine. (The main exception is photovoltaic cells, which directly convert the sun's energy into the movement of electrons = electricity in a usable form.)

Back to our big focus in this summer's session: water. The Cheswick power plant purifies the water it uses to boil into steam beforehand. It was estimated that about 20,000 gallons of this water is lost in a day via leaks, cracks or otherwise. It takes 35 to 40 million gallons of this water to operate the power plant a day, but this includes steam that is reused by condensation before being boiled again.

The Cheswick power plant relies on the nearby Allegheny River to supply it with enough water to cool its machines, as well as to provide the temperature change necessary to convert its purified steam back into purified water. The purified and the river water never mix, but pass in parallel tubes by one another in order to provide cooling. It is estimated that the plant uses 249,000 gallons of river water for this purpose EVERY MINUTE.

In list form, the Cheswick Power Plant uses water for:

• Purified water for creating steam to turn a turbine
• River water to cool steam back into purified water for reuse
• River water to cool machines
• River water for firefighting
• Well water to replace steam water lost in turbine system

Pictures from our visit can be viewed here.

Week 4, June 27 2013, Exhibit Workshop

Summer Session, Week 4

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Exhibit Workshop with Kaleen

Today focused on how to present information to a typical museum audience, which is a mix of very young to older guests.

Our challenge for the day was to explore the museum and see how many different ways stories are being conveyed to the patrons at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Some of the ones we found were:

• Through text - a plaque explaining a certain object through visual words.
• Through movement - the way that animal mounts or dinosaur bones are set up can tell a story of interaction between each other.
• Through video - spoken explanations with associated visuals
• Audio - Bird hall's "chirping" or audio recording
• Demonstration - typically at a teen docent carts

Week 4, June 25 2013, PWSA Field Trip

Summer Session, Week 4

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Trip to Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority

The water that the PWSA (and all other water treatment plants in the Unites States) treats is used in Pittsburgh for everything from drinking water to flushing our toilets.

The process begins when the plant takes in large amounts of river water from the Allegheny, which is held in huge underground tanks before being pumped up to be treated. The first line of filtration captures large debris like leaves, sticks and even fish that were pumped up with the water by passing it through huge metal screens. Gravity is used to an advantage, as chemicals that cause impurities like bacteria and algae to coagulate and sink to the bottom of treatment tanks. These coagulates can then be removed from the water.

Due to Pittsburgh's limestone bedrock, water that is taken in from the Allegheny River has a slightly basic pH of ~7.2. In order to aid the coagulation process, the water is treated to adjust the pH to 6.9, as the reaction of the coagulant chemical with biological matter is sped up at a lower pH.

The water then sits for days in large open tanks that fill the space of an entire warehouse. These are called sedimentation basins. The plant introduces charcoal, which works in much the same way as a carbon filter such as a home-use Britta filter works. Finally, it is passed through microfilration filters that are only large enough to let a water molecule through. This then removes more unwanted compounds from the water that are too large to pass through the membrane of the filter. At last, it is pumped out for use.

The Water Works PWSA supplies water to Reserve township, Fox Chapel, Aspinwall, the city of Pittsburgh, South Side, Millvale, etc. The facility typically serves 300,000 residents of the city, and up to 500,000 people on a workday, as people drive into the city for work. The Water Works on average puts out 65 million gallons of clean drinking water a day.

The amount of energy it takes to do this, from running the machines to just turning the lights on is ~$5 million.

Clean, treated water is used in many different industries, even fracking. Alternatively, the water can be drawn directly from the water source that supplies drinking water to people.

Pictures from our tour can be viewed here.