COLLEGE STATION, April 27, 2010 – A “solar pipe” system designed by a Texas A&M College of Architecture team was among the winning entries in a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-sponsored sustainability competition held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The P3 (People, Prosperity and the Planet) competition, held as part of the EPA’s 2010 National Sustainable Design Expo, challenged college students to create sustainable solutions for worldwide environmental problems through technological innovation.
The Texas A&M team was one of 14 in the 42-team nationwide competition to earn an EPA P3 Award, which was presented at an April 26 ceremony hosted by the National Academy of Science. The award includes $75,000 to further develop the winning design, implement it in the field or move it to the marketplace.
During the weekend P3 contest and exposition, the Texas A&M students, led by Liliana Beltrán, associate professor of architecture, used a model to demonstrate to judges and the general public a solar light pipe system for transporting natural light into the interior of buildings. The presentation included a live video feed to the actual project site at the college’s Digital Fabrication Facility, or “Architecture Ranch,” at Texas A&M’s Riverside Campus.
“People like the system a lot, and they’re asking us when it’s going to be available in their buildings,” said Beltrán, the project’s principal investigator. “Visitors told us it was one of the best projects they saw.”
Utilizing an outdoor light collector, the apparatus, dubbed “Horizontal Hybrid Solar Light Pipe: An Integrated System of Daylight and Electric Light,” funnels sunlight from the collector through a pipe of highly reflective material into a simulated office space built within a rail car container.
“Sustainable innovations like the ones created by our P3 award winners are the environmental and economic future of our nation. In fields from agriculture to architecture to energy production, sustainability is the true north on the path ahead,” said Paul T. Anastas, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. “Innovations like these keep our country competitive and healthy. Congratulations to our winners, and to everyone who participated, for their efforts to create scientific and technological innovations that will lead us into a sustainable future.”
Beltrán said the $75,000 EPA grant allows the team to enter a new phase of development that will include creating a facility to further test the pipe.
Plans call for the pipe to be built in a floating structure at the Architecture Ranch that can be rotated to simulate locations around the world.
The funds will also be used, she said, to refine the pipe’s design with an aim of making it as easy as possible to install.
“We want to go from the demonstration to real applications in the real world,” she said.
Co-principal investigator José Fernández- Solís, assistant professor of construction science, led students in the construction of the pipe in the simulated office space.
He said he was proud of the students’ efforts and hard work in building the pipe and persuading the competition jury of its possibilities.
“It could be a different way of doing lighting altogether within a building,” said Fernández-Solís.
The P3 award competition and National Sustainable Design Expo was held at EPA’s 40th anniversary celebration of Earth Day, April 23-26. Each year, the expo showcases innovative, cutting-edge technologies designed by student teams along with sustainable policies and technologies developed and implemented by government and state agencies, businesses and nonprofit organizations.
In addition to Texas A&M, winning teams were from Harvard University, Clemson University, Humboldt State University, Appalachian State University, Clarkson University (two teams), Cornell University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Roger Williams University, Virginia Tech, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Drexel University.
For more about the project, visit http://archone.tamu.edu/college/news/newsletters/spring2010/stories/SolarLightPipe.html.
The project’s home page is available at http://archone.tamu.edu/epap3/.
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Contact: Kelli Levey, News & Information Services, at (979) 845-4645; or Richard Nira at (979) 845-6863.
