The project saw a lot of hard work by 100 Mile House's Allison Matfin and her teammates, but it paid off for the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) students with a provincial award.
Matfin, 23, and her fellow environmental engineering scholars – Clayton McBride, Stephanie Doherty, Maureen Long and Brenden Vissers – won the 2015 British Columbia Water & Waste Association (BCWWA) Student Design Competition.
The annual contest has students creating a conceptual design to address the needs outlined by a B.C. municipality. This year, the teams were tasked with developing a method to break down sewage and produce biogas at the City of Kelowna’s wastewater treatment plant.
Matfin's team proposed a solution that would produce electrical and thermal energy, recover biosolids and nutrients for use as fertilizer, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90 per cent compared to conventional approaches.
“When you treat wastewater, you're improving the water quality and eventually discharging that water,” Matfin explains. “But you also have solid and sludge left over from all of the treatment processes.
“This project was about a different way to manage it. Currently, they have these solids they produce and they compost them off site. This is a different way to manage their solids.”
While the design is conceptual, the team did have to focus on its real life functionality to ensure it's the right system for Kelowna specifically, Matfin adds.
“One of our goals was to make it practical. They have a very limited space in Kelowna. We were really aiming to fit it into their infrastructure.
“They're also located in the centre of a residential area. They are surrounded by a college and a high school and a bunch of houses. We really wanted to aim to make sure this was a practical design that didn't have any odours or issues.”
Next, the team is presenting its design project at an annual conference and trade show in Kelowna, May 26-29, organized by the BCWWA, a not-for-profit organization representing more than 4,700 water professionals responsible for ensuring safe, sustainable and secure, water, sewer and storm water systems in B.C. and the Yukon.
The UNBC team is also destined for a North American competition in Chicago in September.
“It was a really valuable experience,” Matfin says of the four-month project.
“It's really exciting. It was a lot of hard work, so we're really happy to have awesome results and move forward with it.”
Matfin is currently working in a co-op program with a water consulting company in the Lower Mainland. She's set to graduate in December 2015. She likes science and math and problem solving. Studying environmental engineering has worked out well for her.
“I've really enjoyed it. It's very applications-based, not just the science of it.”
Jianbing Li, co-director of the Environmental Engineering Program, says he's very proud of their accomplishments.
“Our students are strongly motivated, and have enthusiastically participated and excelled in many external engineering design competitions.”
UNBC president Daniel Weeks says the knowledge and leadership skills these students displayed will be a huge advantage for them as they enter the working world.