Speaker: Josh Hancock
I really believe that one person can make a difference.

And I hope that all the people out there listening to this – I hope that you have the self-confidence and the drive to ask questions and to find out the answers yourselves to those questions.

Speaker: Kelly Miller
One person can make a difference.

If you see something that you think you might be able to innovate, go for it. Try it out. See if you can make something better.

My name is Kelly Miller. I’m a junior here at UB.

When I was in high school, I found out that over 1.1 billion people around the world lack access to safe drinking water.

And needless to say, I was appalled.

I wanted to be part of the solution, so I asked around for advice, and I decided to come to UB for the environmental engineering program.

I’d heard of an organization called Engineers for a Sustainable World.

So, during the first semester of my freshman year, a friend and I headed out to Stanford for their national conference.

When I was there, I met a gentleman by the name of Joachim Ezeji who came from Nigeria and works with a non profit called Rural Africa Water Development Project.

RAWDP advocates the use of low-cost technologies for each household. 

Their Mor-Sand Filter technology combines slow sand filtration with the seeds of the Moringa Oleifera tree, otherwise known as the miracle tree.

Seeds from the Moringa tree possess special qualities that let them serve as natural coagulants.

There are some downsides to using just sand filtration or just natural coagulants such as Moringa, so my study is trying to see if using them together in conjunction will help significantly improve the water quality.

There are several components of the filter media that I needed to prepare.

On the top is the layer of Moringa.

I ordered the Moringa seeds from India, and once I had them, I wanted to simulate what the conditions were like in Nigeria, so I put them in an oven overnight at around 40 to 50 degrees Celsius. 

After that, I cracked off the husks, and then threw them into a coffee grinder to get them down to a fine powder.

The main parameter that I’m testing is turbidity. 

What turbidity is is basically a measure of the clarity of water.

So I prepared a mixture of synthetic turbid water.

By comparing the effluent turbidities over a course of runs, I’ll be able to determine if the Moringa indeed does have an effect on the clarity of the water.

That’s the preliminary part.

I’m hoping that the results of my study will really help advance the Mor-Sand Filter.

Hi, my name is Josh Hancock and I’m from Rochester, New York.

I’m a senior here in Environmental Engineering at the University at Buffalo and I’m here to talk about my bio-diesel project.

I first heard about bio-diesel from a random magazine article that I was reading one day.

And shortly thereafter I heard some kids from ESW talking – that’s Engineers for a Sustainable World – and I started to do some homework to learn more about it.

I made a few phone calls and did some number-crunching, when I realized that UB pays to throw away enough grease that we could meet 20% of our diesel needs on campus.

Not only would we be turning a waste stream into an energy source, but we would be able to use a fuel that is safer and has less emissions and is less greenhouse gas intensive than the standard diesel fuel.

So the basic idea was to turn excess grease into bio-diesel that can be used in vehicles on campus.

After we finished the research and determined that the waste grease was of very high quality, and that we could make good bio-diesel out of it, all we needed to do was convince the facilities department and the university to go ahead and use it.

After we ran some numbers, it looked like we could save about $10,000 a year on waste grease collection costs and fuel savings.

So, right now we’re actually working on a deal with a company to do just that.

No matter how things end up, my research opened the door for UB to expand its environmental programs in a new direction and to carefully look at sustainability on campus in a new way.

And if everything works out, we’ll be making a cleaner safer form of energy from a waste product.

So I guess I’m making a difference in the lives and the quality of life for a lot of people.

I never really thought about it that way.

I just wanted to dive into some research and try to prove myself to Dr. Jenson and my idea for alternative fuels.