The Texas A&M Energy Club kicked off the Spring semester with a full slate of activities for students interested in "all things energy." The first meeting of the semester featured Craig Mesenbrink, PE, Cenergistic, Inc., who gave a presentation on building energy analysis to demonstrate how much power goes into running our everyday lives and the associated costs. A lively Q&A session followed his presentation.

Next on the agenda was a trip to the Energy Rodeo in Houston. The Energy Rodeo is an event designed for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in pursuing a career in the energy industry. Attendees had the opportunity to meet and network with experienced energy professionals and conference speakers as well as submit resumes for the "resume book" for a chance to land internships or co-ops this summer.

February speakers included Omar Urquidez who discussed wind energy as part of the Energy 101 lecture series. Omar is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M and previously worked in the wind energy industry. Omar talked about the current barriers to wind energy development and led club members in an interactive activity where participants were separated into groups to elicit investment for sponsors of wind farms.

Also on the agenda for February was John Pappas, Interim Director of the Texas A&M Energy Institute. John discussed the role of the Energy Institute and the newly formed Texas A&M Clean Energy Incubator (TAMCEI) which will offer global entrepreneurs a best-in-class business incubator environment for the development and commercialization of clean energy technologies.

Watch our newsletter for information on upcoming events and activities.

txH20, Fall 2013

By Dr. Calvin Finch, Water Conservation and Technology Center director

Graywater is a "new" water resource that could provide a relatively quick, inexpensive and easy way to extend Texas water supplies. It is ready to use at our homes, where it is produced.

Graywater is water captured from the clothes washing machine, bathroom sink, shower and bathtub. According to the Uniform Plumbing Code, a typical household produces 100 gallons of usable graywater per day. Dr. Raul Cabrera of the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Uvalde, in research funded by the Rio Grande Basin Initiative, has said that amount of water could replace 10 percent to 25 percent of the potable water used on a typical Texas landscape.

My calculations show that a statewide push to retrofit 3.9 million homes to use 33 gallons of graywater a day would produce around 390,000 acre-feet of water per year. That is an impressive amount of water.

Another impressive number - an impressively low one - is the cost of retrofitting a home for graywater use as demonstrated at the Mitchell Lake Audubon Center in San Antonio. The common perception is that retrofitting a home for graywater is expensive. But at the center, Mike Martin of the Texas Center for Applied Technology in the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) has shown that a homeowner could perform a retrofit for between $100 and $500. That is a small expense to supply 100 percent of the water needed for a low-water-use landscape or 15 percent of the water needed for a typical lawn.

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What do school districts, produce companies, refuse haulers and parking companies have in common? They're all applying for grant funding under the Texas Natural Gas Vehicle Program administered by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. 

If you are interested in replacing an older diesel medium- or heavy-duty truck with a cost-saving, low emission natural gas vehicle, click here or contact Heather Ball at 512-463-7359.

With a generous donation of $40,000 from ConocoPhillips, the Energy Institute awarded eight fellowships to support outstanding graduate students doing energy research. Over 60 applicants from numerous departments were nominated for this competitive award. The award recipients are known as "Energy Institute Fellows."

Each month, a Fellow will be featured in the highlights section of News Briefs.  This month's featured Fellow is Duminda Gunawardena, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering.

Duminda's research project is entitled "Deoxygenation of Biomass Oxygenates to Hydrocarbon Fuels via Direct Methane Coupling." For a brief abstract of Duminda's research, click here.  

To see the complete listing of EI Fellows, visit our web site at http://energy.tamu.edu/.