July 1, 2014, Baltimore, MD: Potomac Photonics, an industry leader in micro Digital Fabrication including 3D Printing, has 3D printed a tiny map of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County [UMBC] Campus at 1/4,000 of its original full scale. Potomac used a model generated by aerial robotic photography for the digital source of the 3D printing data. The work was part of Ecosynth, an open source project at UMBC in which 3D models of terrain are created from photography taken by small radio-controlled [RC] aircraft for the main purpose of ecological study.

Using a camera mounted on a robotic Octo-copter, UMBC mechanical engineering students Stephen Gienow and Lindsay Digman took over 5,000 photos in three consecutive flights with the 8-propellered helicopter. To traverse the entire campus and take all the photos took over an hour. The students explain: “The Radio-controlled copters fly a grid pattern, all the while taking thousands of photographs which completely blanket the terrain.  These photographs are then digitally processed using the software Agisoft Photoscan, building 3D geometry from the thousands of photos.”

Potomac then 3D Printed the final 3D map that had 10 centimeter per pixel resolution, and approximately 10 meters of GPS accuracy. A high resolution ProJet 3D printer manufactured by 3D Systems had fine enough resolution to 3D Print a miniaturized representation of the UMBC campus from the map. President and CEO Mike Adelstein comments that “the miniature buildings and landscaping they were able to 3D Print are a natural extension of our work creating micro-parts for the medical device, sensors, microelectronics, microfluidics, consumer and biotech industries.”

Mr. Adelstein adds, “This cool project that combines robotics, 3D modeling, and 3D Printing is part of our Education Manufacturing Initiative, whereby we donate or discount digital fabrication services including 3D Printing, laser and CNC micromachining, and other technologies to researchers, faculty and students at universities who need manufacturing assistance.” He goes on to explain that supporting STEM education is also a big contribution to the economic development of the community. “It’s gratifying to help Stephen and Lindsay who are working to leverage their experience into a small business which offers 2D mapping, 3D scanning, and miniature landscape printing services.”

About the Micro 3D Printing Project Participants

Micro UMBC

Potomac Photonics, Inc. provides micro digital fabrication contract services including 3D Printing, laser micromachining, micro CNC machining, and hot embossing for prototypes to production. The Baltimore-based company is an authorized re-seller of 3D printers from the 3D Systems Corporation and offers extended in-house service of the machines.

Stephen Gienow is pursuing his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from UMBC and plans to graduate in spring 2015.  He has been an intern for Ecosynth since 2012 and is experienced with designing, building, and piloting multicopters as well as generating 3D terrain maps from multicopter imagery.  Stephen is the former president of DEVICE, UMBC’s inventors’ club.  He hopes to use his degree to build a career in unmanned aircraft.

Lindsay Digman is a Mechanical Engineering undergrad at UMBC and plans to graduate in Fall 2015. She was an intern with Ecosynth in 2013 where she gained experience building, testing and piloting multicopters. Lindsay is also the current president of DEVICE, UMBC’s inventors club. She hopes to have a career working with robotics and to potentially become a successful entrepreneur in the STEM fields.

ORRINGTON, Maine — What if the banana peels, coffee filters, diapers and other biodegradable material we throw into the kitchen trash can could be used to fill a gas can?

Or made into pellets that could be sold as heating fuel?

Mainers have pulled newspapers, glass, cardboard and No. 2 plastics out of their trash for years, but the recycling rate remains stuck at about 40 percent. How much material would be eliminated from the waste stream and reused if that percentage were to rise? How much money could Maine towns save if more of the trash they produced could be sold as commodities or turned into marketable energy?

The Municipal Review Committee Inc., a nonprofit organization formed in 1991 to address the trash disposal interests of a group of communities that now total 187, is working to answer those questions. The Municipal Review Committee says it has a plan to increase recycling and offset the costs of trash disposal by selling recyclables in bulk and making fuel from the biodegradable items collected. If successful, the plan would eliminate the expense of dumping trash at the Penobscot Energy Recovery Company waste-to-energy plant in Orrington, a cost expected to double in 2018, and would reduce what is placed in landfills.

Greg Lounder, Municipal Review Committee executive director, explained that an above market contract between PERC and Emera Maine is about to expire in 2018. The plant is getting about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour for the electricity it makes by burning trash, under the contract, but after 2018, “that agreement goes away, and the electricity must be sold on the open market,” Lounder said. “The [market] price right now is 4 cents a kilowatt-hour.”

The Municipal Review Committee, which is part owner of PERC, started looking for alternatives five years ago, and through a ton of research, it came up with the plan for the integrated solid waste and recycling facility.

In short, the Municipal Review Committee wants to get into the trash business. It is exploring the idea of financing a zero-sort recycling and trash-fed fuel processing and engineered fuels facility that would make ethanol or biogas from the food and dirty food containers that people throw away.

Money from trash

Most of what is thrown into a household trash can can be recycled, and the remaining biodegradable waste, with recent advances in enzyme technology, can be made into ethanol, compressed natural gas or, by another process, engineered fuel such as fibrous pellets, according to the Municipal Review Committee.

The key is getting the waste separated, especially discarded food products and other organic material.

“The material has been notoriously hard to recycle,” Lounder said of biowaste.

Organic biowaste — food, food-soiled containers, diapers, leaves, grass and plant trimmings — makes up about 43 percent of what Mainers throw away, with paper accounting for 25 percent; plastics making up 13 percent; metals coming in at 3 percent and glass accounting for nearly 3 percent.

“If everything went through a processing line everything would be recycled,” George Aronson, senior technical advisor to the group and Municipal Review Committee oversight committee member, said recently.

After the biodegradable waste is segregated, it’s “washed thoroughly in an autoclave. From there, they take the materials and pulp it … and then, take the pulp slurry and put it into a distilling process, and ethanol is derived out of that,” Lounder said.

Any leftover fibrous materials that remain from the ethanol-making process can be made into pellets and sold for heating fuel. Municipal Review Committee members went to Toronto to research a potential vendor for this part of the three-prong process.

“Low value solid materials that you can make a fuel product from — that gives you a whole new level of revenue,” Aronson said, calling the biowaste that is landfilled an untapped revenue stream.

The State of Maine is on record as supporting the concept, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection’s 2014 State Waste Management and Recycling Plan presented to Legislators in January.

“Diversion of organics from disposal remains the largest opportunity to reduce Maine’s waste stream,” the report states. “Recent developments in conversion technologies that process organic wastes to create fuels are creating new opportunities to significantly increase the diversion of additional solid wastes from disposal in Maine.”

Trashanol

The technology the Municipal Review Committee needs to make its plan work is already up and running in another part of the country.

Municipal Review Committee members visited an integrated demonstration plant in Lawrenceville, Virginia, run by Maryland-based Fiberight LLC, that turns municipal solid waste into ethanol, biogas or compressed natural gas through a distillation process. In January, the Municipal Review Committee board “passed a resolution directing the [Municipal Review Committee] staff to work with one particular technology vendor, Fiberight, to investigate the technical and economic feasibility of developing a facility utilizing its technology to serve the [Municipal Review Committee] municipalities.”

Craig Stuart-Paul, chief executive of Fiberight, and former owner of Oxford Brewing Company, Maryland’s first micro-brewery, calls the ethanol-fuel Trashanol, and he’s trademarked the name.

“There are a lot of resources in trash that have been either burned or buried,” Stuart-Paul said recently. He said that he came to realize, based on his brewing background, that there must be a better way.

“Being a brewer, I knew when you get sugars, you get booze and that is literally the ‘Ah ha’ moment,” he said by phone. “I knew if we could get sugars from the natural waste, we could distill them and create an alternative fuel.”

The plant in Virginia that was visited by Municipal Review Committee members uses unseparated trash, and the Municipal Review Committee’s plan starts with recycling out everything of value before the remainder is processed into fuel, which is one reason why Fiberight is just one of many vendors that are under consideration.

“They’re a very interesting vendor, but they’re one of a number of vendors [the Municipal Review Committee is considering],” Aronson said. “We have to decide if the revenue is enough to pay for the capital investment and keep the tipping fees down.”

No cost estimates for the approximately 80,000-square-foot processing facility and associated landfill have been provided by the Municipal Review Committee. Aronson said there will be a considerable investment, but the overall goal is to keep disposal costs at about what they are now for Municipal Review Committee members.

The group has already taken heat for the project in the communities of Argyle and Greenbush, where sites have been identified for the processing facility and associated landfill.

Years ago, most communities had a town dump, but a state law passed to reduce the number of landfills to cut down on pollution has dropped the numbers to two state-owned, five municipal, two “ash” and one remaining commercial landfill.

All future landfills must get state approval, which means if the Municipal Review Committee project is to go forward, it must first get Department of Environmental Protection approval. The group applied for a public benefit determination in April, which is pending.

“Our vision includes a system premised on self-reliance derived from appropriate ownership and control,” the application states. “Our vision includes an economical system that does not rely on substantial, ongoing subsidies from the state or otherwise. Our vision includes facility components that can adapt over time to changes in waste generation and composition, and to changes in the markets for products derived from processed MSW. Finally, our vision sees change as an opportunity to improve our system.”

A Maine Department of Environmental Protection public hearing on the Municipal Review Committee application to take comments on the proposal is scheduled for July 2 at the Old Town Elks Lodge, 37 Fourth St. in Old Town. The public meeting is 2-5 p.m. and 6:30-9 p.m.

Congratulations to Dr. Vanderlei Martins and his team for completing the first mechanical shakedown test flight of the Open Imaging Nephelometer (O-Ineph) system was completed last night around 9 p.m. The O-Ineph is mounted outside the wing of the NASA P3 aircraft and it requires huge structural work to survive the loads of the aircraft (see attached photo). This is a very important step towards a fully working system and we congratulate the team for their efforts!

by Beverly Bickel

While UMBC’s strategic planning will chart the future, the Strategic Planning Steering Committee is beginning its process with a realistic look at the foundations needed to support campus development.
The Foundations Work Group is led by Lynne Schaefer, vice president of administration and finance. “As we were developing the four strategic focus areas, ideas about infrastructure and the current state of the university came up,” Schaefer explains. “We realized that, in order to talk about how we need to grow, we have to make sure that we understand where we are now. That discussion evolved into a plan to review five key foundational areas in order to determine how we continue to build a successful future for UMBC.”

The Foundations Work Group’s key areas include people, resources, facilities, technology/business practices and environmental sustainability. A review of the current status of each area will help assess history, strengths, “pain points” and opportunities. For example, the group will look at how the University invests in people by examining the current state of professional development and training, wellness, faculty and staffing ratio comparisons, and faculty mix, as well as qualities that make UMBC a great place to work, and future trends. Additional information about the data being assembled in the five key areas is available here.

“Providing a broad view of where we are now will allow us to look at ourselves realistically and build from where we are,” says Schaefer.

The group will create a data gallery that will be on view at the University Retreat in August, and the gallery will be accessible online for the entire campus by the start of the fall 2014 semester.

Bruce Walz, Strategic Planning Steering Committee co-chair and Foundations Work Group member, describes, “Rather than have each of the strategy groups attempt to find out such information relative to their area on their own, we decided to make this information available in a central data gallery that each group could access and interact with.”

“This approach ensures that all groups will be accessing the same data set, and reduces the potential for overlapping and multiple requests to various campus constituencies,” Walz explains. “Because the Foundations Working Group will continue to be a functioning group during the planning process, the available data will be dynamic and we will be able to effectively address specific requests from the strategy groups.”

The Foundations Work Group members are subject matter experts, as well as other campus leaders who can provide context and input into the five key foundational areas. They include Dorothy Caplan, president, Non-Exempt Staff Senate, and executive administrative assistant, College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences; Philip Farabaugh, professor of biological sciences; Tanvi Gadhia, environmental sustainability coordinator; Julianne Simpson, assistant director, facilities planning; Jack Suess, vice president, information technology; Valerie Thomas, associate vice president, human resources; Charlene Uhl, director of budget/resource analysis; and Bruce Walz, chair, Academic Planning Committee, and professor and chair, emergency health services.

Members also will serve as consultants to the Strategic Planning Steering Committee and four strategic planning strategy groups as questions or needs for analysis arise, and will contribute to the overall strategic planning process. The group plans to meet periodically with UMBC’s faculty and staff senates, as well as the Student Government Association and the Graduate Student Association.

Schaefer says that the inclusiveness of the strategic planning process, as well as the thoughtful planning that has gone into it, have helped to establish an important road map for the future.

“The UMBC community has many shared values and aspirations, and it’s great to see us all coalesce around what I think are really significant aspirational focus areas, while at the same time looking at the status of our foundational areas so that we can move forward from strength,” says Schaefer.

Six UMBC student-athletes were among the 48 America East student-athletes named to the conference’s inaugural Presidential Scholar-Athlete class for their outstanding academic achievements throughout their collegiate careers. Approved by the America East Board of Presidents last June and implemented for 2013-14 academic year, the Presidential Scholar-Athlete award recognizes graduating student-athletes who compiled a cumulative grade-point-average (GPA) of 3.75 or higher as an undergraduate student.

The Retriever honorees were tennis’ Kim Berghaus, swimming and diving’s Patty Hallberg, volleyball’s Robbin Lee, men’s soccer’s Corbin McCarron, cross country/track athlete Kirsten McGovern and baseball’s Luke Seppi.

In addition to registering a 3.75 GPA for their college career, honored student-athletes must have received their undergraduate degree in the academic year they are honored and have attended their institution for a minimum of two years. All six Retriever student-athletes graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Does it make sense to host the 2024 Summer Olympics in Washington, D.C.? Economics Professor Dennis Coates recently shared his thoughts on this question on WAMU’s Metro Connection. The U.S. Olympic Committee has confirmed Washington, D.C. as a finalist to host the Olympics along with San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston.

Coates shared insight on whether the financial investment in hosting the Olympics in D.C. would be worth the return. “By and large most of the cities that hosted saw a decline relative to what would have happened had they not hosted the event,” he said. And the primary reason, he believes, is the crowds.

“People respond to the possibility of crowds, if they’re locals, by saying one of two things. One is ‘I’m getting out of Dodge,’ which means there is a lot of flight so normal expenditures don’t occur. The other is ‘I am not leaving my house,’” Coates said.

Coates also addressed the argument that hosting the Olympics can lead to investment and improvements in infrastructure. “If you need the infrastructure, build the infrastructure,” he said. “You don’t need to throw a party for the world to justify spending the money to redo highways, pave some roads, work on the subway system or whatever. It’s well justified if it’s worth doing; it doesn’t need a party to justify it.”

To listen to the full, six-minute interview with Coates that aired on Metro Connection, click here.