2012 Environmental Engineering Design Team - Montana Tech

A team of Montana Tech Environmental Engineering students were awarded the Most Applicable Technology and Best Poster at the 22nd Annual Environmental Design Contest held May 1-4, 2012 at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. WERC’s Environmental Design Contest is a unique event that brings together industry, government and academia in the search for improved environmental solutions.

Members of the 2012 Design Team were Caitlin Brown, Nathan Dillon, Kayla Lester, Kevin Tweten, and Peixi Yan. The team’s advisor was Rajendra Kasinath. The students designed a protocol and web-based evaluation tool, based on their experiments over six months, for validating water hardness removal technologies and products.

The event challenges students to solve technical problems ranging from validation of water treatment technology to improving product stewardship. For the contest, students present and demonstrate their research and design solutions. The proposed solutions provide opportunities to address concerns about water, energy, and the environment.

All teams prepare four different presentations: written, oral, a bench-scale model and poster, as part of the competition. The students were judged by environmental professionals representing government, industry and academia.