Tag Archives: EPA

Students to compete in underwater robotics contest in Lincoln City April 20

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4-17-19

By Tiffany Woods

LINCOLN CITY, Ore. – About 150 students in Oregon and Washington from elementary school through college will compete in Lincoln City on April 20 in an underwater robotics contest that tests their engineering and problem-solving skills.

A student-operated robot performs a task as part of a Marine Advanced Technology Education Remotely Operated Vehicle competition. Oregon Sea Grant coordinates the annual event.

A student-operated robot performs a task as part of the 2017 MATE ROV competition. Oregon Sea Grant coordinates the annual event. (Photo by Justin Smith)

The 27 teams, which hail from 13 schools or organizations in 14 towns, will be showing off the remotely operated vehicles – or ROVs – they built for the annual MATE Oregon Regional ROV competition. The event is funded by Oregon Sea Grant and the Oregon Coast STEM Hub and aims to prepare students for technical careers.

The public is invited to attend the contest, which will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the swimming pool and gym at the Lincoln City Community Center at 2150 N.E. Oar Place.

The Oregon teams come from Albany, Astoria, Beaverton, Corvallis, Lincoln City, Newport, The Dalles, Tigard, Tillamook, Toledo and Warrenton. The Washington teams are from White Salmon. The college students are from Oregon State University and Linn-Benton Community College. Teams are divided into four categories based on skill and grade level.

The event is one of 38 regional contests around the world that are coordinated by the California-based Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center. The top high school and college teams will qualify to compete in the MATE International ROV Competition, which will be held June 20-22 in Kingsport, Tenn.

Students are tasked with creating mock companies, building a robot for a hypothetical client, and thinking like entrepreneurs to market their products. They gain project management and communication skills as they manage a budget, work as a team, brainstorm solutions and deliver presentations.

A student operates an ROV at the 2017 competition.

A student operates an ROV at the 2017 competition. (Photo by Daniel Cespedes)

Each year a new theme is chosen. This year’s contest highlights the role of ROVs in ensuring public safety, maintaining healthy waterways and preserving historical artifacts. The students must guide their devices through tasks that simulate inspecting and repairing a mock hydroelectric dam, monitoring water quality, restoring habitat for fish and recovering a hypothetical cannon from the Civil War. The latter task is only for the upper two levels. Students will also present marketing displays they created and give presentations to judges about how they built their device.

The judges and volunteer divers come from Oregon State University, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Oregon Coast Aquarium. The MATE Center, the Marine Technology Society, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, and The Sexton Corporation also support the competition.

The contest is one of many events offered by the Oregon Coast STEM Hub and Oregon Sea Grant to develop Oregon’s future workforce by helping students increase their competency in science, technology, engineering and math.

More information:

Former OSU student helps Portland brewery win pollution prevention award

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10-25-18

By Rick Cooper

Portland’s Widmer Brothers Brewing has won a national award for pollution prevention, thanks in part to an intern who was an engineering student at Oregon State University at the time.

Alan Haynes, a summer 2017 intern with Oregon Sea Grant’s Oregon Applied Sustainability Experience program, helped the craft brewery win the 2018 Most Valuable Pollution Prevention Project award from the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable.

Haynes graduated from OSU’s School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering in 2018.

“The work kicked off by the pollution prevention internship led to significant, measurable impacts on the brewery and as a result, cleaner wastewater is being discharged,” said Julia Person, Widmer Brothers Brewing’s sustainability manager.

She said that Haynes and the brewery team explored ways to reduce biological oxygen demand (BOD) and total suspended solids (TSS), regulated wastewater pollutants. BOD and TSS in breweries result from excess yeast, grain or hops that find their way to the drain. The goal was to find methods that saved on extra-strength sewer charges resulting from the BOD and TSS in the brewery’s wastewater discharge.

“Everyone across the brewery was engaged to help identify areas of waste and improvement opportunities,” Person said. “Alan identified the appropriate technology to implement the solutions and ran the numbers on the return on investment for each.”

Alan Haynes

Former OSU student Alan Haynes helped Widmer Brothers Brewing reduce suspended solid waste by 60 percent and save more than $150,000 per year. (Photo by Miranda Grace Crowell, Factor Kites Photography)

“My main focus,” Haynes said, “was to ensure that there was a strong financial argument for implementation, which included researching available technologies and building tools to help model the impact on wastewater charges if they were installed.”

The project resulted in changes in equipment and processes that helped reduce Widmer’s annual biological oxygen demand by 11 percent (10,000 pounds) and total suspended solid waste by 60 percent (6,000 pounds), Person said. The improvements will save the brewery more than $150,000 a year, she said.

The addition of a pump to divert high-TSS liquids from spent grain was the main contributor to the savings. Other innovations resulting from the project include testing at key process points such as tank cleaning, yeast harvesting and kegging, and preventing overflow of a waste yeast capture system. This waste yeast is now hauled to regional dairy farms and used in feed.

Haynes, who is seeking employment in the Portland metro area, said that because he had little background in wastewater processes, it was a challenge to get up to speed on brewery terminology and chemistry while working to identify promising areas to focus on. But the challenge was tempered by Widmer’s “extremely welcoming and friendly” work environment and helpful brewers and engineers, he said. “They made a point of ensuring I was treated as a valuable member of the team and not just another intern.”

The internship program that Haynes took part in is a partnership with Oregon Sea Grant and Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). Funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and launched in 2017, it provides paid 10-week summer internships. Undergraduate and graduate students in Oregon are matched with businesses in the state to help them reduce toxic chemicals, energy, water use and waste.

The first cohort interned at five companies. If those businesses were to implement the interns’ recommendations, they could annually save nearly $900,000, reduce water use by 60 million gallons, and decrease solid or hazardous materials by 8.5 tons, according to DEQ’s website.

Information on how to apply to be an intern next summer will be announced in early 2019.

Students to compete in underwater robot contest in Lincoln City

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Oregon students from elementary school through community college will compete in Lincoln City on April 29 in an underwater robotics contest that tests their engineering and problem-solving skills.

The students, who hail from 20 schools largely along the coast, will be showing off devices they built for the annual Oregon Regional MATE ROV competition, which is coordinated by Oregon Sea Grant and aims to prepare students for technical careers.

The public is invited to attend the event, which will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the swimming pool at the Lincoln City Community Center at 2150 N.E. Oar Place.

The event is one of about 30 regional contests around the world that are coordinated by the California-based Marine Advanced Technology Center (MATE). Top teams from Oregon qualify to compete in the International MATE ROV Competition, which will be held June 23-25 in Long Beach, Calif.

Each year a new theme is chosen. This year’s contest highlights the role of remotely operated vehicles — or ROVs — in securing the health and safety of seaports and helping lay the groundwork for “port cities of the future.” Like port managers, the students will guide their ROVs through tasks that simulate finding cargo containers that fell overboard, constructing an underwater tunnel, and cleaning up contaminated sediment. Students will also present posters or marketing displays they created and give engineering presentations.

Students are also tasked with creating mock companies, thinking like entrepreneurs and working together to “manufacture, market, and sell” their ROVs. The students gain project management and communication skills as they manage a budget, work as a team, brainstorm solutions and deliver presentations, all skills transferable to other careers.

Local marine technology professionals, engineers, and scientists from Oregon State University, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency volunteer as judges. Volunteer divers from the Oregon Coast Aquarium and OSU’s Scientific Dive Team also support the competition.