Concentrating our Energies
Chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Bhavik Bakshi has always wondered why human beings don’t seem to care enough about the systems—specifically along ecological lines—that sustain us.
“I grew up in India watching forests being destroyed, so this question has nagged me since I was a child,”says Bakshi, whose research at Ohio State focuses on the life-cycle analysis of energy and the environment.“Also, I was an undergraduate in chemical engineering when the Bhopal accident occurred.”
That curiosity is an impetus for his 20 years of research at the interface of engineering and the environment, developing new sustainable technologies that don’t end up causing“unexpected surprises”that negatively affect our world.
Bakshi is one of more than 300 Ohio State faculty members who participate in our nation’s quest for environmentally sustainable energy solutions. Their expertise is validated through federal sponsors including the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, National Science Foundation and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. On the state level, Ohio State has received more than $103 million in Third Frontier funding for climate-, energy- and environment-related research since the program began in 2002; other sources of funding in the area exceed $66 million.
Bakshi also isn’t alone in having a personal passion behind his research and academic work in energy and the environment.
When Carolyn Merry, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science, investigates water quality in Ohio, she remembers childhood trips to once-polluted Lake Erie. One focus of her research now is using satellite data to gain a broader understanding of Ohio’s large lake ecosystems.
And for Scott Potter, an engineering research specialist who studies efficiency and conservation, energy is a vocation and an avocation. His interest was prompted when he was a sophomore in college and took a tour of an energy-efficient“smart house.”Although by today’s standards the house’s efficiencies were elementary, Potter was so impressed at the time that he changed his major from pre-med and began learning all he could about utilities.
“Much of that house had cut-away and transparent walls so you could see the structure and insulation. There were monitors that showed the heat and energy loss in the different structures. Back then, it amazed me that we built houses that used two to three times more energy than necessary,”says Potter, who also is senior energy advisor for Ohio State’s Institute for Energy and the Environment. “Since that day, it has been a goal of mine to change the way people understand and use energy.”
Potter points out that Ohio State’s breadth of expertise in multiple areas is an advantage enabling faculty and students to work together to address energy and environment issues.
“The problems we face with energy are not single-issue problems, and there are no single-issue answers,”he says.“The big picture is energy affects everyone, and everyone has to be a part of the solution.”
Representatives of“everyone”aren’t hard to find at Ohio State, says Doug Alsdorf, associate professor of earth sciences and interim director of the Institute for Energy and the Environment.
“We are the largest university in the U.S.,”he notes.“Not only are we the largest, we have grown from traditional land grant roots to a university of excellence. There are many national academy members working on these efforts, as well as AAAS Fellows, IEEE Fellows, etc. So we have not only the breadth, we have the depth in addressing these factors.
“It takes a broad entity to address these types of questions,”he says.“You want to make sure whatever solution you implement doesn’t have negative implications. And it’s not just great faculty, we have great students. We have undergraduates who knock my socks off.”
The question of energy, Alsdorf stresses, is not simply one that can be addressed by one person sitting in a lab building a new device.
“We also have a need for researchers to understand how that device will be used by the general population, plus the economics, plus the policy, plus the impact on the environment and how the changing environment impacts that device that was originally created in the lab,”he says.
The Institute for Energy and the Environment, established in 2007, has set goals to increase external funding by $50 million in five years; improve campus sustainability; and build a state-of-the-art“Energy Center”on campus. The institute serves as the unifying entity for Ohio State researchers, centers and programs working to solve global energy issues while promoting environmental sustainability.
One example is the College of Engineering’s Center for Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, led by Suvrajeet Sen, professor of integrated systems engineering. The center concentrates efforts in four areas: clean energy infrastructure efficiency and policy; environmental assessment and management; energy sources, conversion and storage; and sustainable buildings and mobility.
Other energy- and environment-related college and university activities include:
- The College of Engineering and university-wide efforts are bolstered by collaborations with industry partners including Honda of America, GE Aviation, Ford Motor Co., American Electric Power, Duke Energy, First Energy and Rolls Royce.
- More than half of the 13 major research centers university-wide that focus on climate, energy and the environment are affiliated with the College of Engineering.
- College of Engineering Interim Dean Gregory Washington is a board member of the University Clean Energy Alliance of Ohio.
- University President E. Gordon Gee is co-chair of the Energy Initiative Advisory Committee of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. Its advocacy group is chaired by Stacy Rastauskas, the university’s assistant vice president for federal relations.
- In February, Gee joined the Brookings Institution to unveil the report“Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes: A Step toward Energy Sustainability,”which calls for increased federal funding and a creation of a national network of energy-oriented research centers.
- Potter and Ohio State University Extension helped develop a report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy showing how Ohio could save money and create jobs using current energy-efficient strategies.
- The university’s sustainable campus campaign, Scarlet, Gray and Green, includes activities such as making buildings more energy efficient, scaling up recycling, providing alternative transportation, firing up buses with biofuel and, in dining halls, eliminating Styrofoam and increasing locally grown food options.
College of Engineering Interim Dean Gregory Washington emphasizes that solving energy and environment problems is the next major issue the world must address, and engineers will play a major role in finding solutions. In fact, of the 300 Ohio State faculty members working on these topics, 125 have connections to the College of Engineering.
“At the end of the day, the scientific discoveries that happen in a laboratory have to be turned into manufactured products, processes and technology,”Washington says.“That is the domain of the engineer.”
Two fundamental motivations, Alsdorf maintains, are behind the need for energy and environment studies.
“One, let’s wean ourselves from our critical dependence on foreign oil,”he says, noting that roughly two-thirds of the 20 million barrels of oil that the United States uses per day are brought here from other countries. The use of oil itself has its own drawbacks—negative effects on the environment.
The second motivation, Alsdorf says, is the increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.
“There is no question that the atmospheric CO2 concentrations are at levels unprecedented over the past 800,000 years,”he says.“It’s the rate of increase that’s alarming as well, not just the amount. It’s rocketing upward.
“That’s you and I and cars and everything else we do producing that CO2 .”
Growth in countries such as China and India also has increased energy demands.
The resulting warming of the planet, with its detrimental effects on ecology, is an argument that Ohio State researchers recognize is not universally accepted.
“People don’t buy all the dire predictions, but even if the outcome isn’t that dire, human activity is contributing to changes in the environment that are already being observed,”Sen says.“Even if those predictions are partially true, we’re not allowing our children and grandchildren to inherit the clean world we inherited—and actually we didn’t inherit a clean world, either. I think universities are the places where these kinds of societal changes happen.”
On the Web:
iee.osu.edu Center for Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, cese.osu.edu
Art: stats to scatter around the story. WHAT IF MATT PUT THESE INSIDE LIGHT BULBS? MATT: DON’T DO THIS IF IT’S A STUPID IDEA ( ) MATT: CHOOSE HOWEVER MANY OF THESE YOU WANT. THEY ARE IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE, MOST IMPORTANT ON TOP.
300: number of Ohio State faculty dedicated to the nation’s quest for environmentally sustainable energy solutions that promote economic growth in Ohio and safeguard our planet
60: the estimated mpg fuel economy rating for the new Electric- Range Extended Vehicle (E-REV) powered by E85, Ohio State’s entry in the U.S. Department of Energy’s EcoCAR competition
50: percent increase in efficiency, over current state-of-the-art products, of photovoltaics developed by professor Steve Ringel
10: percent of fuel economy improvement that could be gained by converting heat currently wasted in automobiles into useable energy using thermoelectric technology developed by Joseph Heremans, professor of mechanical engineering and physics
$103 million: State of Ohio Third Frontier funding received for Ohio State energy and environment related research since 2002
1: The mass of hydrogen, in kilograms, required to propel the Buckeye Bullet 2, a hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle, to 460 km per hour
1,000,000: The number of ampere-hours through which advanced HEV batteries have been cycled in the Center for Automotive Research’s Battery Aging Laboratory in the past year. $0: estimated yearly cost for electricity consumed by the Solar Decathlon house built by Ohio State students
50 in 5: IEE goal is to increase sponsored research related to energy and the environment by $50 million over the next five years
3 years the time it takes Ohio State Students to design, build and test a hybrid vehicle
1: ranking of the Ohio State student team competing in the first year of the U.S. Department of Energy EcoCAR competition
35-40: miles the distance Ohio State’s EcoCAR can go on one charge
