2 Clarkson projects awarded EPA funds

POTSDAM — Two Clarkson University research projects were awarded $75,000 each from the Environmental Protection Agency.

One team is developing a way to grow produce in cold, dark climates. The other one wants to create biogas from cow manure on small farms.

"They are immediately of interest to our surroundings," said Stefan J. Grimberg, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "When we were starting these projects, we knew the north country and we wanted to do something to help the farming community. This is a challenge a lot of companies have not addressed, these issues. And yet we live here."

Mr. Grimberg and his team of 12 students and two other professors are trying to prove that it is financially possible to have an anaerobic digester on a small farm of fewer than 60 cows. Conventional wisdom, Mr. Grimberg says, is that it is prohibitively expensive for a small farm to set one up. However, using other organic materials, such as leftover hay and grass, it becomes possible. Small farms in India and China already use similar systems.

The other project aims to build a high-rise greenhouse that can be used in cold climates year-round to grow organic produce, rather than having to import it from California or Florida. Twelve students and Susan E. Powers, professor and associate dean of engineering for research and graduate studies, have been working on it.

Both teams have been working on their proposals for a while; they submitted them to the EPA a year and a half ago for a $10,000 grant to work on designs and models.

The $75,000 prize money will give them each a chance to move forward with design plans and get their ideas out of the lab.

"It's a viable business for the future," Ms. Powers said. "We're going to build a pilot greenhouse on Clarkson's campus next year. We did it this year in a laboratory. There was no natural light and it was too warm."

Mr. Grimberg's project will use the money to try its idea with a sample farm of five cows on the Cornell Cooperative Extension farm in Canton next semester.

The contest was held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during the EPA's Earth Day celebration April 23 to 26.

"Our students had to talk to the general public and explain to the general public what they were doing," Ms. Powers said. "The opportunity to get the general public excited about what we're doing was unparalleled in other competitions Clarkson is involved in."

The People, Prosperity and the Planet, or P3, Awards are designed to promote sustainable projects and ideas that at the same time encourage economic growth. Both projects, according to their teams, can make a return on the initial investment in less than a decade.

But that part comes later.

"The goal is not to be able to make money; it's to make sure the engineering is feasible," Ms. Powers said. "It's to make sure our estimates are reasonable."

This is the first time Clarkson has won a P3 award; it received an honorable mention in 2006 for a project in which Ms. Powers was involved as well, about biodiesel-powered school buses. Forty-two teams competed in this year's contest and P3 awards were given to 12 universities, including Virginia Tech and Harvard and Cornell universities.

Clarkson is the first university to win two P3 awards in one year, according to EPA officials.

"I think it's a major reward," Mr. Grimberg said. "We are a very small school and we competed against a large amount of very big, very good schools and we are the only one who got two awards. It's a pat on our back."