CEAC-2023-2-February

DON’T LET YOUR BUSINESS GO UP IN FLAMES!
100% TAX DEDUCTIBLE
INSTALL OR RETROFIT FIRE
SPRINKLERS TODAY!
DEDUCT THE FULL COST OF QUALIFIED PROPERTY IMPROVEMENT!
CARES ACT
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES)
Act closed a loophole that was included in the TCJA by
making QIP 15-year property. This change made businesses
of all sizes, regardless of the amounts spent on equipment,
eligible to deduct the full cost of commercial fire sprinkler
systems using bonus depreciation.
The time is now to upgrade your building's fire safety with a
fire sprinkler system or a sprinkler retrofit. Under the new
Section 179 guidelines, the one year deduction period
phases out after 2022. Any new sprinkler system or retrofit
completed between September 27, 2017 and December 31,
2022 will be able to be fully expensed in one year. After
2022, the allowed deduction percentage is as follows:
2021: 100%
2022: 100%
2023: 80%
2024: 60%
2025: 40%
2026: 20%
2027 and after: The depreciation schedule becomes
permanently set at 15 years.
WHAT IS QIP?
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), passed in December,
2017, gave small businesses the ability to deduct the full
cost of Qualified Improvement Property (QIP) up to $1.04
million in the year of installation using Section 179.
QIP is defined as improvements to the interior of an existing
building that is not residential property. Commercial fire
sprinkler systems, including upgrades of existing systems or
retrofitting in existing structures, are considered QIP.
The Section 179 deduction is not phased out over time.
However, there is a phase out of the amount allowed as a
deduction based on a maximum spending amount of $2.59
million on equipment in a year. Businesses that spend over
that amount will see a dollar for dollar reduction of their
eligible deduction. So a business that spends $3.63 million
or more on equipment in a given year would not be allowed
any Section 179 Deduction.
WHAT HAS CHANGED?
Prior to the TCJA allowing Section 179 on qualified
improvement property, including sprinkler systems,
property of this type was only allowed a deduction on a
straight line basis over a period of 39 years. In other words,
a company spending $390,000 on a commercial sprinkler
system prior to the TCJA would only deduct $10,000 per
year for 39 years.
While many believe that the intention of Congress was to
make Qualified Improvement Property 15-year property,
which would have made this property eligible for bonus
depreciation, the TCJA left the life of this property at 39
years. So, a taxpayer who did not elect to use the Section
179 Deduction or who has that deduction phased out would
have been left to depreciate the remaining balance of the
assets over a 39-year period.
Neither of these deductions is currently available for fire
sprinkler systems installed in residential high rises. The
National Fire Sprinkler Association (NFSA) continues to fight
to obtain incentives for residential structures.
For more information on how these tax incentives might impact the business of your
contractors, we would recommend that they contact their tax professionals, as
situations differ based on the facts and circumstances for each business. As a general
rule, we would not recommend that the Local provide tax advice to the contractors.
CALL OR CLICK 708­710­1448 • FireProtectionContractors.com

February 2023
VOLUME 88 • Number 2
Official Magazine of
Founded 1934
Dedicated to the Precept “That Anything Being
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38
16
cover story:
What You Don’t Know About Your
Water Tanks and Pipes Could Cost
You Dearly
Chicago Corrosion Group owner and founder Warren
Brand reviews best practices on preventing and mitigating
corrosion on carbon steel tanks.
Compact, High Flow Safety Relief
Valve Design
State-of-the-art Emergency Responder Communication
Enhancement Systems (ERCES) ensure reliable two-way radio
communication at stadiums, preventing lost communication
in potential life-or-death situations.
Chief Engineer magazine
(ISSN 1553-5797) is published 12 times per year for
Chief Engineers Association of Chicagoland by:
Fanning Communications
4701 Midlothian Turnpike, Ste 4
Crestwood, IL 60418
www.fanningcommunications.com
22
Achieving Power System Balance
In the power-generation industry today, self-contained
automation platforms employ programming logic schemes to
effect power system balance, crucially minimizing the need
for manual oversight and control.
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reflect the opinion of the publisher © 2023 Fanning Communications.
5 president’s message
6 in brief
8 news
48 member news
50 techline
56 new products
62 events
64 ashrae update
66 american street guide
68 boiler room annex
70 advertisers list
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 3

DON’T LET YOUR
BUSINESS GO UP
IN FLAMES!
The Fire Protection Contractors work on all aspects of fire protection
systems. Starting with the initial design of your system to the installation we
are with you every step of the way. Almost as important as installing a fire
sprinkler system is the routine maintenance. This includes inspection and
testing to ensure the system is working and, in most areas, required by law.
24 Hour Emergency Service
Inspection, Testing and
Maintenance
Fire Pump Testing
Design and Installation –
Residential, Commercial,
Industrial
Retrofit and Remodel
Fire Suppression Systems
CALL OR CLICK ANYTIME FOR
EMERGENCY OR ROUTINE SERVICE
708­710­1448 • FireProtectionContractors.com

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Dear Members,
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Dan Carey
Trustee
312-446-1967
Bryan McLaughlin
Doorkeeper
708-687-6254
Robert Jones
Warden
773-407-5111
OFFICERS
Ken Botta
President
708-952-1879
Douglas Kruczek
Vice President
312-287-4915
Laurence McMahon
Vice President
708-535-7003
Ralph White
Recording Secretary
708-579-0259
Brian Staunton
Treasurer
312-533-1575
Brendan Winters
Financial Secretary
773-457-6403
Barbara Hickey
Sergeant-At-Arms
773-350-9673
Kevin Kenzinger
Corresponding Secretary
312-296-5603
DIRECTORS
John McDonagh
Curator
312-296-7887
Brock Sharapata
Warden
312-617-7115
Michael Collins
Warden
708-712-0126
I’d like to thank everyone for
their continued support of the
Chief Engineers. Last month,
we had our first meeting of
2023, and we were glad to see
everyone come out to celebrate a
new year with the Chief Engineer
Association of Chicagoland.
We’re proud of this organization
and its long history, and we’re
glad to see it continue into
another year.
For the CEAC to remain robust
and continue as it always has, we
need to ensure that we’re taking
care of our membership. The next
generation of Chief Engineers has
to be brought into the fold, and
we must maintain our existing relationships with our Associate Member
organizations while establishing ties with new vendors who understand
and appreciate the value of the CEAC. We would like to encourage
anyone with leads on either to go ahead and reach out on behalf of the
Chief Engineers and tell them about the advantages to membership in
the CEAC.
This month, instead of a monthly meeting, we have our annual Skatefest
event, taking place Saturday, Feb. 18, at the Morgan Park Sports Center
(11505 S Western Ave, Chicago). In spite of its name, this is more than
just an ice-skating event. Both the gymnastics area and the ice rink will
be available from 11:00am-3:00pm. Lunch will be provided, and there
will be games and prizes as well. We had to miss out on this event last
year due to COVID, so it’s nice to see it return to the Chiefs calendar, and
we hope you and your families will join us for this always-memorable day
out.
At this time, HOH and Air Comfort have both committed as sponsors,
and Air Comfort says that it will be bringing some items to hand out to
everybody. We are grateful to them and to all of our Associate Member
organizations that support the Chiefs year-round. Remember to likewise
give them your support if you need them while you’re performing coil
cleaning, vibration analysis or infrared scanning that you might be doing
in February. Give ’em the business!
Stay safe and warm through this winter, and remember to keep in your
thoughts and prayers those in the military and our first responders who
daily make sacrifices to keep us safe.
I look forward to seeing all of you at Skatefest!
Sincerely,
Patrick Wawrzyniak
Warden
773-410-2326
Pat Biesty
Warden
312-618-6864
Sean Casey
Warden
312-890-9282
Thomas Phillips
Past President
773-445-7423
Ken Botta
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 5

In Brief
NJ Governor: No Pause in Wind Farm Prep
After 7th Dead Whale
BRIGANTINE, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey’s governor said Friday,
Jan. 13, that he does not think undersea preparations for
offshore wind farms should be halted in response to a recent
spate of whale deaths in New Jersey and New York.
Democrat Phil Murphy spoke after lawmakers at the local,
state and federal levels called for a temporary pause in
ocean floor preparation work for offshore wind projects in
New Jersey and New York after another dead whale washed
ashore in the area.
Also on January 13, most of New Jersey’s environmental
groups warned against linking offshore wind work and
whale deaths, calling such associations “unfounded and
premature.”
The death was the seventh in a little over a month. The spate
of fatalities prompted an environmental group and some
citizens groups opposed to offshore wind to ask President
Biden earlier this week for a federal investigation into the
deaths.
The latest death was that of a 20- to 25-foot-long humpback
whale. Its remains washed ashore in Brigantine, just north
of Atlantic City, which itself has seen two dead whales on its
beaches in recent weeks.
There was no immediate indication of what caused the latest
death.
Nevada Lithium Mine Gets $700M
Conditional Loan From Energy
RENO, Nev. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday,
Jan. 13, announced a conditional loan of $700 million to an
Australian mining company to pursue a proposed lithium
project in Nevada, as the U.S. seeks domestic supplies for a
key component in electric vehicle batteries.
Ioneer Ltd. has hoped to begin mining by 2026 in Esmerelda
County. The company projects the site could produce
enough lithium to support production of about 400,000
electric vehicles annually for decades; the government’s
announcement pegged that figure at 370,000 vehicles
annually.
The loan would be the latest project to demonstrate the
Biden administration’s commitment to strengthen the
nation’s battery supply chain, electrify the transportation
sector and cut reliance on fossil fuels and foreign supplies of
raw materials, the Department of Energy said.
the Fish and Wildlife Service has said is on the brink of
extinction. Conservationists have sued in the past to protect
the 6-inch-tall plant with yellow blooms.
The Energy Department announcement said the Ioneer
project is working to minimize impact on the plant,
adding that the loan is contingent on completion of an
environmental impact statement.
Worker Dies After Partial Collapse of Chicago
Building
CHICAGO (AP) — A construction worker trapped under
debris when a Chicago residential building partially collapsed
has died, authorities said Thursday, Jan. 12.
It took nearly an hour for rescuers to pull the worker from
several feet of debris after the collapse at a vacant, threestory
building in the Bronzeville residential district south of
downtown, the Chicago Fire Department said.
The worker was taken to the University of Chicago Medical
Center. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office
confirmed the worker was pronounced dead.
The worker’s identity wasn’t immediately released. Officials
were investigating the cause of the collapse.
Julius Hall, 43, who lives a block away from the scene, told
the Chicago Sun-Times that crews had been working on the
building since the summer.
Footage from television stations showed a large hole in the
side of the building with bricks, cinder blocks, wood and
other debris in piles next to and inside the structure.
Pipe Break Over Holiday Break Flooded
Detroit High School
DETROIT (AP) — A Detroit high school is shifting to online
learning after water from broken pipes damaged a majority
of classrooms during the holiday break, officials said
Monday, Jan. 9.
Repairs and restoration at Southeastern High School “will
take nearly two months to complete,” officials said.
The gym was not damaged, which will allow winter sports to
continue. Online learning commenced Jan. 12.
Southeastern, which has more than 500 students, focuses on
business, administration and entrepreneurship, according
to its website. It is one of six Detroit high schools with a
selective admissions process. Southeastern opened in 1917.
The proposed Ioneer project has run up against an
endangered Nevada wildflower, Tiehm’s buckwheat, that
6
| Chief Engineer

Georgia Nuclear Plant Startup Delayed Due
to Vibrating Pipe
ATLANTA (AP) — Startup of a nuclear power plant in Georgia
will be delayed since its operator found a vibrating pipe in
the cooling system during testing.
Georgia Power Co., the lead owner of Plant Vogtle near
Waynesboro, announced the delay Wednesday, Jan. 11. The
company said that the third reactor at the plant is scheduled
to begin generating electricity for the grid in April. The unit
of Atlanta-based Southern Co. had previously given a startup
deadline of March.
The problem was found during startup testing in a pipe that
is part of the reactor’s automatic depressurization system,
said Georgia Power spokesperson Jacob Hawkins. He said the
pipe needs to be braced with additional support.
“It’s not a safety issue,” he said.
More Radioactive Tests Sought at St. Louis
School District
WASHINGTON, Mo. (AP) — In an unusual show of
bipartisanship, Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and
Democratic U.S. Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri asked the
federal government to perform more testing for radioactive
contamination on properties owned by the Hazelwood
School District.
In a letter sent Jan. 11 to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lt.
Gen. Scott Spellmon, Hawley and Bush said the agency
should respond to a request by the district to have all its
properties tested.
The request comes after district officials received conflicting
information last year about radioactive contamination at
Lana Elementary School in the St. Louis suburb of Florissant.
Lana Elementary opened in 1970 and sits in the flood
plain of Coldwater Creek, which was contaminated with
radioactive waste generated when Mallinckrodt Chemical
processed uranium in the 1940s and 1950s for atomic
weapons.
The Corps’ remediation of the creek is not expected to be
finished until 2038, Corps officials have said.
Bill Gates Considers W.Va. to Expand Nuclear
Energy Efforts
Microsoft co-founder Gates, who visited a closed down
coal-fired plant in Glasgow, W.Va, on Monday, Jan. 9, said he
needs to see how his Natrium nuclear reactor demonstration
in Wyoming performs before making any announcements
about new sites. The Kemmerer, Wyo., sodium-cooled
nuclear reactor is taking over the site of a current coalpowered
plant and was scheduled to be online by 2028, but
is facing delays because its only source of fuel was uranium
from Russia, now at war with Ukraine.
However, during a visit to the American Electric Power
plant, which closed in 2015, Gates called the West Virginia’s
Legislature’s decision last year to repeal the state’s ban on
nuclear power facilities “quite impressive” and said he’s
looking for sites to expand his efforts to the East Coast.
The Wyoming coal-fired power plant that is being converted
for the sodium-cooled nuclear reactor is scheduled to
close in 2025, when Gates said its 200 employees will stay
on and transition to working with nuclear energy. The
demonstration project comes as many U.S. states see nuclear
emerging as an option to help transition energy production
away from coal, oil and natural gas to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions.
Germany to Draw Up Legislation to Enable
Carbon Storage
BERLIN (AP) — Germany is working on legislation to enable
the use of the much-discussed technology of underground
carbon storage, a top government official said Thursday, Jan.
5, adding that it is preferable to releasing carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere.
Speaking to an industry group in Norway, Vice Chancellor
Robert Habeck, who is also Germany’s economy and climate
minister, pointed to the prospects of a “new market” for
carbon capture and storage, particularly in the lime and
cement industry.
The technology has yet to be deployed at scale. Opponents
maintain that it is unproven and has been less effective than
alternatives such as solar and wind at decarbonizing the
energy sector.
Habeck, a member of the environmentalist Green party, said
that “we are no longer in a situation [where] we can pick
and choose.”
“Putting CO2 under the ground is quite simply better
than releasing it into the atmosphere,” he said. “For this
reason, Germany is now working on a carbon management
strategy in order to create the legislation for the use of such
technologies in this year, by mid-2023.”
GLASGOW, W.Va. (AP) — Bill Gates is looking to West
Virginia as he plans for the next phase of his effort to reboot
U.S. nuclear energy technology: powering the east coast.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 7

News
Imagining the Future Bioclimatic
Essential Services Buildings of The
Canary Islands
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Spain — The Government of
the Canary Islands commissioned two maximum security
buildings to increase the response capacity against natural
hazards and climate change in the archipelago, but
also against pandemics and other possible events such
as cyberattacks or terrorism. After winning the public
competition to design the ESE Buildings, one in Tenerife
and one in Gran Canaria, the Spanish architect Fernando
Menis recently unveiled the design of two identical but
autonomous buildings. The fact that two buildings, located
on different sites, have the same design, means that in the
long run they are more economically sustainable because
they are easier to operate and maintain. Energy efficient,
highly adaptable to external factors, and equipped to stand
up to any type of exceptional situation, the ESEs will provide
services to citizens uninterruptedly throughout the year.
The ESEs will stand out for their construction innovations,
energy efficiency and unique architecture, their focus
on the ecological regeneration of the environment, the
safety of operations, the accessibility of security forces and
other emergency teams from anywhere, but also for their
attention to the wellbeing of workers subjected to high
levels of stress.
Two Maximum Security Buildings to Increase Public Safety in
the Canary Islands
In a world in which the devastating effects of natural hazards
are enhanced by increasingly extreme climate changes, faced
with threats such as global viruses, cyberattacks, sabotage
or terrorism, it is vital to have adequate infrastructure to
guarantee public safety and prevent potential risks. Since
2008, the European Union has focused on consolidating
what it called “critical infrastructure” that is energy,
telecommunications, industry and transport equipment.
Their operation is essential for the functioning of Europe
and, therefore, their vulnerability is an international problem
that affects all the member countries of the EU. On the
other hand, the island territories of the world, where more
than 700 million people live — 11 percent of the world’s
total population — are more vulnerable to adverse climatic
events, and thus require resilient and durable infrastructures
capable of adapting to almost any circumstance, and able to
face disasters yet to come. The Canary Islands archipelago is
highly exposed to rising sea levels, to volcanic eruptions, to
extreme phenomena such as haze from the Sahara Desert,
and to hurricanes that increasingly move away from the
Caribbean and form near Cape Verde, the Canary Islands and
Madeira. In addition, even though it is a Spanish territory,
it has to deal with the 2,000 km (approx. 1,243 mi.) distance
that separates it from the Iberian Peninsula. At the same
time, it is also one of the most advanced island territories
in the world in general organization of services that affect
citizens.
Given recent events — the COVID19 pandemic, Russia’s war
in Ukraine, cyberattacks and the increase in extreme weather
events — the Government of the Canary Islands has taken
a further step in terms of public safety, risk prevention and
management of emergencies, calling, in 2021, a public
tender for the design of two Essential Services Buildings, one
on each of the largest islands of the archipelago, Tenerife
and Gran Canaria, with a total investment of almost 80
million euros. The ESEs are maximum security buildings that
will be built to withstand earthquakes and other extreme
phenomena, to concentrate public awareness, response
and action services in the event of public safety incidents.
The buildings will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, including two separate Data Centers to guarantee
cyberprotection. The entry submitted by the Spanish
architect Fernando Menis, leading a team of experts in
different fields related to emergencies and security, won the
design contest and the construction of the two buildings is
scheduled to start in 2023.
The Essential Services Buildings Will Be Able to Serve Any
Exceptional Situation
The Government of the Canary Islands relies on a series of
essential services that are provided 24 hours a day, 365 days
a year, offering services related to security and emergencies,
urgent sanitary coordination, police, rescue, personalized
attention, social tele-care, infrastructure control, etc., that,
to this day, are located in dispersed facilities. The Essential
Services Buildings will bring together and coordinate the
actions and resources of all these infrastructures in a highperformance
technological building, strategically located and
responsive to sustainability criteria. Each building will house
more than 500 public employees and will occupy 15,000 m2
(approx. 49,000 sq. ft.) of floor area.
Safe and Resilient Buildings
In order to solve the connection with the environment and
ensure protection against any external action, each ESE has
been designed with an outer ring, acting as a buttress, which
generates a large interior open space where the building
is housed. This barrier will be prepared to resist, dissipate,
8
| Chief Engineer

The future Edificios de Servicios Esenciales (Essential Services Buildings) of the Canary Islands are designed by the Spanish architect Fernando Menis.
(Image: © Fernando Menis)
and reduce the impact of giant waves, tidal waves, and even
lava rivers. The organic geometry of the form is designed
that, in the event of lava rivers or tsunamis, the element
flows to the sides in order to reduce the effects on the
building. To ensure the correct structural behavior of the
building during earthquakes, the ESEs have been designed
to withstand force accelerations higher than those indicated
in the current regulations for the Canary Islands. In addition,
very ductile concrete structures have been used, which allow
deformation and the dissipation of energy without affecting
their resistant capacity. Given the importance of control and
security for the proper functioning of the Essential Services
Buildings, access has been limited to two entrances, one for
staff and the other for vehicles.
Buildings That Are Friendly to Its Users and the City
The ESEs, like other buildings by Fernando Menis, place
special emphasis on integration with the environment,
seeking its renaturation, while trying to contribute to the
regeneration of the urban and social fabric that houses
them. The perimeter walls, inspired by breakwater walls,
have the typical vegetation of the area. The large sidewalks
in the access areas and the arrangement of trees, both inside
and on the edges of the plots, will integrate the buildings
into their urban context and create spaces of transition and
relationship. While on a larger scale, the massive expression
of the building will produce a landmark in the urban fabric
of the city.
workers, will give the sensation of immersion in nature,
thanks to its great biodiversity across different areas: The
aromatic one will contain bromeliads, rosemary, jasmine,
low-rise conifers, orange trees, maidenhair and ferns, a
colorful zone of multicolored flowers, a zone of low shrubs,
and a vertical garden zone. In addition, the inner courtyard
will contain spaces for encounter, rest, leisure and sports.
The rest areas are distributed throughout the building
and the interior garden, so that the employees have the
possibility of compensating for the extreme stress that their
work usually entails. In addition, the building includes a slot
2.80 meters (approx. 9.19 ft.) wide and 300 m (approx. 984)
long, with a vertical garden, which provides light and natural
ventilation to the three upper floors. Since it is connected
to the main outdoor courtyard, this ramp can be used for
exercise such as walking or running. The glazed façade is
made with low-emissive double glass and has a solar control
system so that the solar incidence is reduced by more than
80 percent without any color change in the shade of the
glass. It is also resistant against winds of more than 280
km/h (approx. 174 mi./h) and is able to receive impacts from
solid elements. The horizontal slat system is arranged in
such a way that it allows the view of the exterior both from
the sitting position at the worktables, and from a standing
position. A control system for natural lighting and interior
thermal conditions will continuously monitor the building
and modify each element to guarantee comfort. The interior
circulation is simple and intuitive, with a main core in the
The interior garden, designed to support the wellbeing of
(Continued on pg. 11)
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 9

News
3D image of a work room in the future ESEs. (Image: © Fernando Menis)
(Continued from pg. 9)
entrance area and two secondary cores on the sides, thus
creating an interior street and freeing up the entire front of
the building to achieve a completely flexible interior space.
The linear and mobile structures will allow rapid subdivision
into rooms with different capacities depending on the needs,
maximizing adaptability to the diversity of uses at all times.
Functionality and Operability
The functional spaces include work rooms — one being the
Crisis Room — citizen service rooms, offices, and technical
spaces of the different facilities that provide service to the
buildings, among which the Security Control Room stands
out. Cafeteria areas, assembly hall, press room, car park and
high security areas are added. With the exception of the
Crisis Room, which will be used in extraordinary situations
and will have independent systems, the other workrooms
will be permanently occupied by operators and technicians.
For this reason, special attention is paid to lighting and
regulation through day-night sequences, to the adequacy
of power and voice/data sockets, to the ergonomics of
workstations, to air conditioning, air renewal and filtering,
as well as to the control of access and security. The 8 m
(approx. 26 ft.) height of the top floor allows for elevated
control rooms to offer a global vision of the operations that
are being carried out at all times.
Both buildings will have a Data Processing Center, each 350
m2 (approx. 1,148 sq. ft.) equal and designed under the same
concepts of security, redundancy, robustness, adaptability
to future needs, ease of operation and energy efficiency.
In this last aspect, they are distinguished from the vast
majority of other data centers by incorporating an energy
recovery system that will be used for reheating water, thus
avoiding discharging the heat generated by the servers into
the environment. The main function of the roof is to serve
as a heliport, and its finish with picón (local volcanic stone)
improves the energy efficiency of the building by increasing
its thermal inertia. In addition, the use of picón, which has a
high level of acoustic absorption due to its porosity, will help
to control noise pollution from the heliport.
Energy Efficient Buildings
The ESEs will have a bioclimatic design to produce natural
ventilation and optimal air quality, while the air conditioning
installation will allow energy savings and maximize comfort.
The main design criteria are the rational and efficient use
of energy, low energy consumption machinery, and the
treatment of the envelope with 8 centimeters (approx.
3.15 in.) of thermal insulation — avoiding thermal bridges
— all of which allow the building to obtain a type A
energy certification. The buildings will have a photovoltaic
installation on the roof of approximately 90 kW for
the generation of electrical energy and to support the
production of air conditioning. On the façade, a system of
slats varies its spacing depending on the orientation, so that
the incident radiation inside is controlled at all times. The
main aspects that make the Essential Services Buildings very
energy efficient are the following:
• Thermal insulation: The thermal envelope of the building
with lower thermal transmittance values than what is
required in the Canary Islands Technical Building Code
(Continued on pg. 12)
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 11

News
3D image of the Data Processing Center in one of the two future ESEs. (Image: © Fernando Menis)
(Continued from pg. 11)
• decreases the thermal loads and lowers the overall energy
consumption.
• Airtightness: For the windows and doors on the façade,
carpentry with very low thermal transmittance, low
emissive double glazing, solar control and very low
permeability will be used to control unwanted air
infiltrations and improve the efficiency of air conditioning
facilities.
• Reducing solar incidence: A solar protection system with
micro-perforated horizontal slats, together with the use of
solar control glass in the carpentry, allow the entry of solar
radiation to be optimized and reduce the thermal loads in
summer.
• Heat recovery: The building reuses the heat generated by
the buildings’ data centers to heat the rest of the building,
lowering the energy consumption.
• Reducing thermal bridges: All non-essential thermal
bridges to the outside have been avoided, considerably
reducing energy loss.
• Photovoltaic panels: Placed on the roof to use the incident
solar radiation, they will help to reduce the building’s
energy consumption and will guarantee, through the
installation of batteries, the production of electricity in
case of emergency.
Project Facts:
Competition: 2021
Construction schedule: 2023 — 2025
Program: Maximum Security Buildings
Construction Budget: 39.700.556,05€ (ESE
Tenerife) + 40.022.936,19€ (ESE Gran Canaria)
Total M2 built: 22.958,39 (ESE Tenerife) +
22.958,39 (ESE Gran Canaria)
Number of floors: 7 + technical roof
Main material: concrete
Project Credits:
Design Team: MENIS + IEOCI
Architect: Fernando Menis Consultants DEERNS
(Data Centers Specialists); MARTÍNEZ SEGOVÍA
(Structure Engineers); ESTEL Consulting
(Heliports Specialists); SED-IA ARCHITECTURE
(Sustainable Construction Specialists)
12
| Chief Engineer

Research Project Underway to Prepare
Water Utilities for Wildfire Events
PORTLAND, Ore. — A multi-disciplinary team of utilities,
academia, and consultants have convened to develop a study
and publish guidance to improve water treatment resilience
against the impacts of forest fires.
Critical to water security, forested watersheds provide 75
percent of the world’s accessible freshwater (Food and
Agriculture Organization of United Nations 2021) and
supply drinking water for more than two-thirds of North
American consumers (EPA 2019). The frequency and severity
of forest fires have been increasing globally with warming
temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns due to
climate change. Wildfires can cause costly, long-term water
treatment issues that push water treatment processes
beyond their design and operational response capabilities.
equip utilities with guidance on how to best enhance
treatment resilience to climate change-exacerbated
landscape disturbances, including but not limited to wildland
fire.”
A key outcome of the study will be the prioritization of
readily available adaptations to the water treatment process
to respond to wildfire impacts and still meet regulatory,
public health, and production requirements. The project is
anticipated to take 15 months. Upon completion, a project
report will be published, and findings presented to the
industry via a WRF webcast.
Such issues include filtration effectiveness, disinfection
efficacy, the elevation of disinfection byproduct formation,
and increased bioavailable phosphorus leading to
problematic cyanobacterial/algal blooms.
Led by a principal research team of Lynn Stephens (Brown
and Caldwell), Dr. Mac Gifford and Yone Akagi (Portland
Water Bureau), and Dr. Monica Emelko (University of
Waterloo), Water Research Foundation (WRF) project #5168
is funded by the foundation’s Emerging Opportunities
Program and the Portland Water Bureau (PWB).
PWB is designing a new greenfield, 135-million-gallonsper-day
water filtration facility. This study will inform how
to prioritize treatment changes due to wildfires and other
events. Additional in-kind partners include Metro Vancouver,
Medford Water Commission, and the City of Grants Pass.
The team will assess the ash characteristics of several past
Northwest fires, including large amounts of ash collected
by PWB from the 2020 Riverside Fire, which spread to more
than 138,000 acres. Ash collected by Seattle Public Utilities
and Metro Vancouver from the 2022 Bolt Creek Fire and
Minnekhada Fire, respectively, will also be analyzed.
This project has already been a successful collaboration
between utilities to collect such large amounts of ash in an
active fire zone. The team will use the large amounts of ash
to conduct bench- and pilot-scale treatment experiments to
evaluate the effectiveness of different treatment strategies.
Moreover, specialized analytical monitoring to fully
characterize organics and nutrient changes throughout the
treatment process will be utilized.
“It is becoming more common for wildfires to impact
drinking water supplies,” said Stephens. “This study will
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 13

News
Sinisi Solutions Deploys Ballistic
Protection for Major U.S. Substations
and Critical Infrastructure
MANASQUAN, N.J. (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sinisi Solutions, a
provider of modular transformer separations and ballistic fire
barriers, has completed strategic installations for major U.S.
substations and critical infrastructure to protect from fire,
blast and ballistic events that directly impact grid resiliency.
In the past year, Sinisi Solutions has completed installations
that provide optimized cost-effective protection for
transformers, substations, energy/fuel storage facilities,
equipment and controls, battery fields, LNG, hydrogen and
chemical facilities — all of which are critical to national
security and the reliability of the power grid.
“Continued and increased attacks on the power grid demand
expanded application of the ballistic, fire and explosion
standards we have developed working with utilities over the
past 20 years,” John Sinisi, SME, said.
“We protect assets that take years to replace or repair and
are critical to keeping the grid reliable. As shown by the
recent attacks, many of these facilities remain unprotected.
As we transition to green energy, it is important to protect
new critical facilities, including energy storage systems,
fuel storage facilities, wind farm transformers, and new
substations.”
Sinisi Solutions has provided expertise, assessments and turnkey
solutions for critical infrastructure protection to clients
since 1999. Please visit firebarrierexperts.com/contact to
submit an inquiry, or contact us at (732) 232-2100.
Transformer protected from ballistic attack by strategically placed Level 8 shield covering its line of sight.
14
| Chief Engineer

Bellofram Skinless Silicone Sponge
Sheeting Beats Polyurethane Foam at
High Temperatures
NEWELL, W.Va. — When sourcing material for sealing
and gasketing, cushioning, or vibration control, why
choose a product that withers in the heat? Skinless silicone
sponge sheeting from Bellofram Silicones does everything
polyurethane foam can do — all while withstanding much
higher temperatures. Polyurethane foam becomes brittle
or crumbles when exposed to high temperatures, but
Bellofram’s skinless silicone sponge sheeting offers high
performance in temps up to and exceeding 400° F (also as
low as -103° F). Polyurethane foam simply can’t compete.
Because Bellofram silicone sponge sheeting is skived from
buns, it is skinless and able to meet some of the same density
levels of polyurethane foam.
You never sacrifice performance with skinless silicone
sponge from Bellofram. It offers outstanding recovery after
compression. It is ideal for gasketing and sealing, cushioning,
and vibration management applications, and displays strong
chemical resistance.
Available in varying degrees of thickness, hardness, or
with optional additives, it’s easy to use skinless silicone
sponge sheeting in place of any polyurethane foam in your
application and start reaping the added benefits of vastly
improved temperature resistance.
In addition to offering standard sheets, Bellofram is the
only source for skinless silicone sponge sheeting skived from
buns, making custom thicknesses easy to deliver. Bellofram
compounds its formulations in-house for ultimate flexibility
and an assured source of raw materials to accelerate delivery.
Small batches are a Bellofram specialty.
For more information, visit
https://www.belloframsilicones.com/sponge.
Bellofram Skinless Silicone Sponge Sheeting beats polyurethane foam at high temperatures, and doesn’t get brittle or crumble.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 15

News
Compact, High Flow Safety Relief Valve
Design
For centuries, safety relief valves have served as a vital line
of protection against excessive overpressure that — left
unaddressed — can cause considerable damage to industrial
processes including equipment failure and process upset,
along with secondary hazards arising from an uncontrolled
release of pressurized fluid. These essential safety devices
are designed to automatically open when the force exerted
by the pressure reaches a setpoint to rapidly discharge the
fluids. Once the over-pressurization has dissipated, the valve
recloses, conserving the remaining fluid.
In developing codes and standards, the industry has largely
standardized around the 90-degree flow path design
outlined by the American Petroleum Institute (API). This
standardized approach requires a drop in pressure inside
the valve before it discharges fluid from the exit nozzle.
To ensure proper performance, the orifice diameter at the
inlet side is smaller than the nominal valve size, with an
outlet diameter that is larger than both. A two by threeinch
traditional API configuration safety relief valve will be
designed with either a 0.785" diameter H orifice or a 1.287"
diameter J orifice at its inlet and a three-inch outlet, for
example.
While it may be convenient for the purposes of
standardization, other approaches to safety relief valve
design are possible while meeting industry codes and
standards such as those published by The American Society of
Mechanical Engineers (ASME), says Geof Brazier, Managing
Director, BS&B Safety Systems, Custom Engineered Products
Division.
“The traditional 90-degree standardized configuration has
the unintended consequence of limiting the amount of flow
that is possible,” adds Brazier.
So, BS&B had a novel idea: What if the safety relief valve was
an inline device, with outlet and inlet connections that were
the same size and an inlet orifice diameter to match the inlet
connection?
To address the need for increased flow, BS&B has introduced
the IDV Safety Valve, a self-reclosing safety pressure relief
valve that functions the same as a traditional safety relief
valve but with an inline configuration rather than the
traditional angle body configuration.
The inline configuration allows for up to three times the
capacity of a conventional valve. The smaller the nominal
size, the greater the capacity benefit from the IDV Safety
Valve. This new technology enables customers to achieve the
same overall outcome as a traditional valve. The increased
capacity allows engineers and operators to optimize their
pressure safety systems and, in many applications, reduce the
piping configuration (line size) by one or more nominal sizes.
The IDV Safety Valve is compact and lightweight and can be
installed using ANSI/ASME B 16.5 and international flange
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“With an inline design, the flow moves in a straight line and
doesn’t have to change direction,” says Brazier. “The design
allows for a certain amount of flow expansion, but we don’t
have nearly the same level of turbulence inside the valve,
which increases the capacity of the device,” says Brazier.
By having the inlet diameter match the nominal size of the
valve, there is more flow [capacity]. The valve can also be
more compact, lighter in weight, and requires smaller size
and therefore less expensive piping. The result is simplified
installation and a lower total cost of investment.
16 | Chief Engineer
www.chiefengineer.org

A safety relief valve like that from BS&B can be more compact, lighter in
weight, requiring smaller size and less expensive piping.
A self-reclosing safety pressure relief valve with an inline configuration
addresses the need for increased flow.
connections. Mounting can be either horizontal or vertical,
adding to the flexibility of application for this design. The set
pressure levels are independent of backpressure, meaning
the valve is suitable for variable backpressure applications.
The valve can be combined with an optional integrated
rupture disk at the inlet and/or outlet. The combination of
a rupture disk device with a safety relief valve has many
benefits arising from valve isolation to the normal process
conditions including optimal leak tightness, increased
operating pressure, extended valve life, and reduced valve
maintenance.
The IDV has already been installed in more than 10,000
processes worldwide, making it an established alternative
to the safety relief valve that meets the same codes and
standards.
For more information, contact BS&B Safety Systems at 7455
East 46th Street, Tulsa, OK 74145-6379, call (918) 622-5950,
e-mail sales@bsbsystems.com or visit www.bsbsafety.co.
Mounting of the IDV Safety Valve can be either horizontal or vertical,
adding to the flexibility of application for this design.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 17

News
CPV Announces Launch of CPV Retail
Energy Platform
SUGAR LAND, Texas (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Competitive
Power Ventures (CPV) recently announced the launch of
its retail energy platform, CPV Retail Energy, which will
initially serve as a retail electric provider for commercial
and industrial customers in states within the PJM market
and eventually expand into New York and New England.
CPV Retail Energy builds on CPV’s decarbonization efforts
and commitment to ESG by helping businesses meet their
sustainability goals through renewable and dispatchable low
carbon energy solutions.
“CPV is excited to launch this new platform which will
enable the company to share the benefits of its renewable
and world-class low-carbon fleet directly with customers”
said Qadir Khan, President of CPV Retail Energy. “The retail
team has decades of experience in building successful retail
platforms, and we look forward to developing this new
customer-focused platform.”
CPV’s generation assets, which include state-of-the-art,
highly efficient and low-emitting, combined-cycle generation
facilities as well as an extensive development pipeline of
wind, solar and dispatchable resources with carbon capture,
will serve as the backbone for CPV Retail Energy. The new
retail platform will offer a variety of sustainable electricity
solutions to help businesses meet their ESG goals.
“With plans and products from CPV Retail Energy, customers
will have access to reliable electricity sourced from a
company that is not only committed to the environmentally
responsible production of electricity, but that also places
a strong emphasis on being a good corporate citizen and
operating with integrity” said Qadir Khan. “We can’t wait
to get started growing CPV Retail Energy into a premier
“Greentailer” in the retail electric power industry and offer
customized pricing plans including 100-percent renewable
options.”
For more information on how CPV Retail Energy can assist
business clients across Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois,
Delaware, DC, and Maryland (PJM) with a comprehensive
selection of electricity options, please visit
www.cpvretail.com.
Competitive Power Ventures’ recently announced CPV Retail Energy will provide PJM commercial and industrial customers with direct access to CPV’s
world-class, low-carbon generation
18
| Chief Engineer

Illinois Tech Professor Receives Award
From National Academy of Science’s
Transportation Research Board
CHICAGO — Illinois Institute of Technology Professor of Civil
and Architectural Engineering Gongkang Fu has received the
Roy W. Crum Distinguished Service Award from the National
Academy of Science’s Transportation Research Board (TRB).
The award is given annually to recognize outstanding
achievements in the field of transportation research.
The board reviews a wide range of transportation modes
including highway, railway, aviation and more, and it
considers a broad range of research contributions from
construction and design to legislation, to the psychology of
driver safety and beyond.
Fu is one of just a few researchers in the history of the award
to be recognized for contributions to structural engineering,
and the TRB specifically acknowledged “his significant,
innovative, visionary, and practical contributions to bridge
engineering research.”
“I was so happy of course,” he says. “It covers quite a long
history of my work, and I’m glad that work was recognized.
It’s unusually significant.”
Fu’s longest overarching effort was the creation of a bridge
deterioration model. The concept was later adopted and
implemented state by state into national practices that help
engineers assess and monitor the health of bridges as they
age. He got the idea for the model in the early 1980s when,
as a graduate student, he became interested in combining
his knowledge of bridges with a mathematical modeling
technique that he was learning in a course.
Professor of Civil and Architectural Engineering Gongkang Fu is one of
just a few researchers ever to be honored with Roy W. Crum Distinguished
Service Award for contributions to structural engineering
Fu’s other contributions to the field include evaluating
the impact of heavy trucks on bridge infrastructure with
methodologies that have been applied nationally, as well as
other advances in bridge safety and reliability. Some of his
work has been adopted into national specifications of bridge
engineering.
Fu was also recently the recipient of the 2021 Ernest E.
Howard Award and the 2020 Alfredo Ang Award on Risk
Analysis and Management of Civil Infrastructure by the
American Society of Civil Engineers.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 19

News
Opticom Technologies Celebrates 50
Years of Industrial Video Monitoring
Solutions
BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Opticom
Technologies, a leader in industrial video monitoring
solutions, is celebrating 50 years in business. The company,
founded in 1973, has evolved to continue offering innovative
products as video monitoring technology has advanced.
“It’s unique for a video monitoring company to have 50 years
of history under its belt,” said Opticom Global Sales Manager
Heidi Schmidt. “We’re honored to continue serving our
industrial and commercial customers with the latest advances
in video technology.”
Opticom was founded by “Richard” David Boyd, a proponent
of CCTV monitoring long before adoption ramped up after
9/11 and the security concerns the terrorist attacks brought
forward. Boyd passed away in 2021, but his legacy continues.
Opticom’s CC04-IP3MV Rugged Industrial High Definition IP Networking
Camera is designed to withstand harsh environments — a point of pride in
the company’s 50-year history.
With its rugged products, designed to withstand harsh
environments, Opticom Tech best serves commercial and
industrial companies like sawmills, mines, food processing
plants, and other facilities with dust, vibration, moisture,
and other elements not generally accommodating to video
equipment.
“Our product development centers around designing
products throughout the entire video monitoring system —
cameras, mounts, monitors, connectors, and more — that
can survive in tough environments,” said Schmidt. “Our
customers can’t afford to stop production to troubleshoot or
replace a video camera, so we build products that last; a fact
reflective in our 50-year history.”
Products of note developed by Opticom include its CC02
rugged industrial analog and TVI cameras, CC03 explosionproof
cameras, CC04 high-definition IP networking cameras,
and VM-1 vibration shock mounts.
Opticom will be celebrating its 50th year throughout 2023
with customer acknowledgements, giveaways, and other
announcements.
For more information, visit https://opticomtech.com/
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20
| Chief Engineer

New Report From US Water Alliance
and Stantec Offers Innovative Model for
Water Pricing Equity
The U.S. Water Alliance and Stantec, a global leader in
sustainable design, recently released A Promising Water
Pricing Model for Equity and Financial Resilience. This report
presents an innovative model for pricing and billing water
that is an opportunity to achieve greater equity by reducing
water bills for most low-income households while preserving
revenue and improving financial resilience for water utilities.
Like all common goods, affordable water and sanitation
access benefits entire communities, not just individual
customers. Yet in most places, revenue to provide these
services comes from rates based on how much water a
customer uses rather than what customers can afford or
how various costs are accrued throughout the system. The
COVID-19 pandemic emphasized how this system exposes
both individuals and communities to public health and
economic risks. It also showed how utilities are vulnerable to
financial resilience challenges in situations where customer
debt becomes greater than what these customers can
realistically pay back.
“The water sector is overdue for a more sustainable business
model that safeguards every customer’s ability to afford an
essential service,” said Mami Hara, CEO of the U.S. Water
Alliance. “This model represents a way to simultaneously
improve utility financial resilience and reduce the burden
water bills can have on low-income households.”
The model developed and presented in the report is an
outcome of Cincinnati Water Works’ participation in a
nine-city U.S. Water Alliance pilot program to develop
alternative affordability practices, with the goal of creating a
context where water shutoffs for low-income people are not
necessary.
“This model is an evolution in cost-based pricing that does a
better job of aligning how water is paid for with the sources
of utility costs than usage-based bills alone,” said John Take,
executive vice president and chief growth and innovation
officer at Stantec. “This alignment is a fundamentally more
equitable approach. Running the data with our partners in
Cincinnati showed it can have major affordability benefits.”
The hypothesis of the study is that specific system costs can
be removed from traditional charges like flow and customerbased
rates and instead be redistributed with a cost-based
methodology using property characteristics that are more
reflective of customers’ ability to pay, increasing affordability
and equity. The analysis includes frontage feet of properties,
parcel area, building footprint, property value, and number
of bedrooms.
“This innovative approach to pricing water is intriguing
because the model shows it would automatically help the
majority of Cincinnati’s low-income customers better afford
their water bills, unlike most customer-assistance programs
that require customers to take action and enroll,” said Verna
Arnette, interim executive director with Greater Cincinnati
Water Works. “It addresses fundamental drawbacks to
current programs, which are often resource intensive to
implement and suffer from low participation rates.”
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Volume 88 · Number 2 | 21

News
Achieving Power System Balance
For the power generation industry, maintaining power
system balance as closely as possible to the ideal power
factor (PF) of 1.000 using correction capacitors and other
technology is critical. Power factor is a measure of how
effectively electricity is used, with an equal 1.000 PF
benefiting both the customer and utility, and a low or
high PF indicating poor electrical power utilization. A low
power factor can overload generation units making them
work harder for the same amount of power. A high power
factor can cause instability to equipment on the distribution
network as the voltage rises beyond normal capabilities. In
contrast, improving the PF can maximize current-carrying
capacity, improve voltage to equipment, reduce power
losses, and lower electric bills.
“The challenge for small municipal utilities and co-ops
required to maintain proper power system balance is that
they are more susceptible to large industrial loads and
typically do not have complex SCADA systems to automate
the process,” says Ryan McAuliffe, Sales Engineer, NovaTech
Automation, a substation automation company that has
served the power transmission and distribution market for
more than 30 years. In addition, smaller utilities may not
have enough operators to manually monitor and effectively
control the PF on a 24/7 basis.
Fortunately, cost-effective, self-contained automation
platforms can utilize programming logic schemes to maintain
power system balance, minimizing the need for manual
oversight and control.
“Today, automation platforms can maintain system balance
with PF at virtually 1.000 with accuracy to 3 decimal places,”
says McAuliffe. “The control system calculates whether
the power system is out of tolerance, and if so, initiates
a correction using the capacitor banks to keep the power
factor at 1.000.”
Automating System Balance
In a recent example, a small municipal power utility in
Smithville, Tenn., required an automatic capacitor control
logic scheme for their distribution network.
“The municipal utility has a small distribution network and
is contracted [with a major Transmission Network Operator],
under penalty of fine, to keep the PF of the power system
as close to 1.000 as possible. However, the system includes
a rather large industrial customer, so the utility needed a
better way to manage their PF,” says McAuliffe.
The utility has two substations with interconnecting feeders
through their distribution network with the feeder circuit
breaker on either end acting as the open or closed point.
The capacitors are positioned outside the substation fence at
various locations on those interconnected feeders.
As a solution, the utility chose to implement a complete
integrated power balancing system including capacitors, a
capacitor bank controller, circuit breakers, and a controlling
RTU.
Eleven capacitor banks on five feeders are automatically controlled by the power factor balancing system.
22
| Chief Engineer

All monitoring, control, visualization and security of the
integrated utility power balancing system is provided by the
OrionLX Substation Automation Platform by NovaTech. The
OrionLX is a communication and automation processor that
can be integrated with practically any equipment, usually
microprocessor-based relays, meters, and other IEDs as well.
It can connect to SCADA system or itself be a basic SCADA
system.
The system uses open-source Web technologies and preconfigured
template pages. This simplifies the building of
interactive SCADA and local HMI screens to view data from
connected IEDs and RTUs using standard Web browsers.
Engineers can open multiple browsers to have graphical
interfaces for the different substations and key remote
monitoring features on different tabs, which eases network
monitoring. Multiple users can be logged in simultaneously.
“With the substation automation platform, the utility did
not need a dispatcher for PF balancing — only a supervisor to
oversee the facility,” says McAuliffe.
According to McAuliffe, the platform’s System Balance
scheme helps to ensure that each substation maintains a
1.000 power factor. The scheme will initialize values and then
load all previous retentive values or default values if there
are no retentive values. With the scheme, an overall leading
power system state will turn off one or more capacitors, and
an overall lagging power system state will turn on one or
more capacitors, providing alerts and control.
To ensure that individual feeders are in balance and within
tolerance, a second logic scheme has been proposed for
Individual Feeder Balance that will run every five minutes
after completion of the primary scheme. This is needed due
to the configuration of the utility’s distribution network
assets. Although total substation power factor can be
balanced, it is possible to have two feeders out of balance in
the condition of one lagging and one leading. The second
scheme looks at individual feeder power factor tolerance and
makes corrections as needed.
Together, the primary and secondary balancing schemes
provide integrated Volt-VAR regulation and optimization.
The schemes automatically switch capacitor banks in and out
to maintain power factor very close to balance, summing
PF on each feeder and comparing it with the metered value
reported to the power provider. The automation includes
features to reduce wear and maintenance such as never
switching the same capacitor bank twice in a row.
The system maintains the ability to manually control all
capacitor banks and provides Web-based HMI for monitoring
and control of breakers and IEDs in substations.
Overall, the primary and secondary balancing schemes have
been extremely beneficial for the small municipal utility in
Tennessee. The schemes have reduced the labor required
for the utility to look after the distribution grid, and it has
maintained almost full power factor compliance with the
Transmission Network Operator.
For more information on SCADA solutions from NovaTech
Automation, visit www.novatechautomation.com or call
(913) 451-1880.
Capacitor bank status screen.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 23

News
Three Washington State Electric
Substations Vandalized
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Vandalism at three power
substations in western Washington recently cut power to
about 14,000 utility customers, the Pierce County Sheriff’s
Office said.
The attacks come as federal officials are warning that the
U.S. power grid needs better security to prevent domestic
terrorism and after a large outage in North Carolina earlier
this month that took days to repair.
In January, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report
warned that domestic extremists have been developing
“credible, specific plans” to attack electricity infrastructure
since at least 2020.
Tacoma Public Utilities reported vandalism at about 5:30am
Sunday, Dec. 25, at one substation, followed by vandalism
at a second substation, the sheriff’s office said. The outages
affected about 7,300 customers in an area southeast of
Tacoma. Just before noon, the utility had restored power to
all but 2,700 customers whose power was estimated to be
restored at about 6:30pm.
Meanwhile, just before noon, Puget Sound Energy reported
vandalism that had happened at about 2:30am Sunday,
Dec. 25, caused a power outage at one of its substations.
The nearly 7,700 customers who lost power had it restored
by 5am, Puget Sound spokesperson Andrew Padula said.
The company is investigating, along with authorities, and
declined to comment further, Padula said.
In all three cases, the sheriff’s office says someone forced
their way into the fenced area surrounding the substations
and damaged equipment to cause a power outage.
A Tacoma Power crew works at an electrical substation damaged by vandals
early on Christmas morning, Sunday, Dec. 25, 2022, in Graham, Wa. (Ken
Lambert/The Seattle Times via AP)
Officials have not said how the substations were damaged.
No suspects are in custody and officials don’t know if it was a
coordinated attack.
Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW-FM in Seattle
reported earlier this month that Portland General Electric,
the Bonneville Power Administration, Cowlitz County
Public Utility District and Puget Sound Energy confirmed six
separate attacks on electrical substations in Washington and
Oregon in the previous weeks.
24
| Chief Engineer

Western Specialty Contractors Installs
New Metal Wall Panel System on Offutt
Air Force Base Control Tower
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Western Specialty Contractors -
Sheet Metal Division in Kansas City, Mo., recently replaced
leaking, improperly installed wall panels and flashings
covering the control tower at Offutt Air Force Base in
Omaha, Neb.
Historic Offutt AFB is the headquarters for the U.S. Strategic
Command, 557th Weather Wing, and 55th Wing, the largest
wing of the United States Air Force’s Air Combat Command.
With its history dating back to 1894, Offutt AFB has played
an important role throughout U.S. history, including hosting
one of the first major strategy sessions by President George
W. Bush in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
With so many important military aircraft flying in and out of
Offutt daily, it’s imperative that its airfield and control tower
function properly at all times.
Western Specialty Contractors was contracted to replace
leaking freezer panels and associated flashing on the
envelope of the base’s control tower which resulted from
improper installation when the structure was built nearly 30
years ago.
Western’s sheet metal experts worked with project general
contractor HHI Corp. to estimate/bid the job, and design and
fabricate a new Dri-Design wall panel system and associated
flashings. Dri-Design is a 100-percent recyclable, pressureequalized
rain-screen architectural metal wall system that
attaches to nearly any substrate without the use of clips or
extrusions. Its interlocking design makes installation quick
and easy, plus it comes in a variety of colors, materials,
textures and custom perforations.
Western Specialty Contractors recently replaced leaking freezer panels and
flashing on the envelope of the control tower at Offutt Air Force Base in
Omaha, Neb.
Western was able to install the control tower’s new metal
panel system within a month and on budget. The architect on
the project was Kenneth Hahn Architects.
For more information about Western’s KC Sheet Metal
Branch, visit www.westernspecialtycontractors.com/projects/
branches/kc-sheet-metal/.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 25

News
Atmospheric Water Harvesting: Can We
Get Water Out of Thin Air? By Jared Pike
Earth’s atmosphere holds six times more fresh water than
all of its rivers combined. So is it possible to harvest that
water, in areas where people have no other fresh water
source? Purdue University researchers have crunched the
numbers, and have the data to show which atmospheric
water harvesting methods work best in different regions of
the world.
“Water in the atmosphere is widely available, and requires
a lot less filtering than that of groundwater,” said David
Warsinger, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
“Some areas of the world don’t have a viable source of
groundwater, and they’re not near enough to the sea to
make desalination practical. For them, atmospheric water
harvesting may make the most sense. But this is still very
much an emerging technology.”
There are four main methods for extracting water from the
atmosphere:
• Fog nets: setting up physical nets in humid environments
to collect the water in the air;
• Dew plates: using temperature differences to encourage
water to condense on metal plates;
• Sorbents: using chemicals to absorb water from the air,
and then heating the material to extract the water;
• Membranes: using vapor-selective membranes that extract
water as air passes over them.
But there’s a problem. Each of these technologies is in
different stages of development, so it’s difficult to compare
the effectiveness of each method, especially in varying
conditions. “These solutions all use different benchmarks,”
said Andrew Fix, a Ph.D. student researching how to use
membranes to de-humidify outdoor air for HVAC systems.
“They may say a certain technology extracts 20 gallons of
water a day, but under what temperature and humidity
conditions? How big was the system? How would a different
technology compare in the same conditions? There hasn’t
been a fair method of comparison until now. How do you
pick the correct technology for the correct environment?”
Their solution was to create a system of benchmarks, based
on ideal energy use and environmental conditions. This
research has now been published in Energy & Environmental
Science.
“We started with the laws of thermodynamics to define
the minimum theoretical energy requirement required to
extract water from air,” said Akshay Rao, the paper’s lead
author and now a Ph.D. student at Stanford. “From there,
we built individual models of energy input and output under
different conditions, to compare the different technologies.”
26 | Chief Engineer
The team generated two charts that delineate which
methods work best under which environmental conditions.
For example, the chart on the left shows that fog nets (which
require zero energy) are the best option when the air is
100% saturated with water. However, fog won’t form when
the relative humidity drops below 100%, at which point
other methods become more energy-efficient.
Perhaps more importantly, the chart on the right shows
the ideal operation, if technologies were perfected. “For
example, we are currently working on vapor-selective
membranes, but the vacuum pump efficiencies are terrible
right now,” said Warsinger. “If those improve, then
membranes become the clear choice under a much broader
range of conditions. This highlights the importance of
improving our compressors and other equipment designs.”
Their next step was to use supercomputers to crunch huge
amounts of global climate data. From this, they generated a
map of which atmospheric water harvesting methods are the
most energy efficient in certain areas of the world.
“What we found is that it’s not just temperature and
humidity; seasonality also plays a huge role,” said Warsinger.
“Some areas are very consistent, while others have extreme
wet and dry seasons. In those cases, certain technologies may
only work for a few months, but they’ll work really well.”
So what could this look like in the real world? Warsinger’s
team is working with a school in west Africa to find
out. They recently received a grant from the Shah
Family Global Innovation Lab to bring these methods to
Kédougou, Senegal, where seasonal rains (and lack of clean
groundwater) make atmospheric water harvesting a viable
option.
“In that culture, water is mostly gathered by school-age
girls,” said Warsinger. “Sometimes they have to travel great
distances to find a viable well, which means they can’t
attend school. If we can make atmospheric water harvesting
work in those conditions, then girls won’t have to endanger
themselves by traveling outside the town. They can stay in
school, and have cleaner sources of water also.”
He continues: “Looking at the map, it’s interesting that the
areas where atmospheric water harvesting is most efficient
are also places where water quality is a constant worry.
Places like the Amazon, the Congo, India/Bangladesh, and
Southeast Asia have great potential to reduce diseases
caused by contaminated groundwater. Atmospheric water
harvesting is not just about scarcity; it’s about water quality
as well.”

Fog nets, which passively collect water from the humidity in the air, only work if the air is 100-percent saturated. Newer technologies are making other
methods of atmospheric water harvesting more viable in more places around the world. (Photo courtesy Thomson Reuters Foundation/Khalid Fakhar)
Climate change will also affect the map, in both good
and bad ways. For example, there are large sections in the
northern hemisphere where atmospheric water harvesting is
not feasible, due to the low temperatures. That may change
as the earth heats up. “As the atmosphere warms, it becomes
capable of holding more humidity,” said Fix. “This presents
an opportunity, because if you pick the right technology,
atmospheric water harvesting becomes a more feasible
alternative to bring freshwater to more areas of the world.”
“Providing clean water to people everywhere is a huge
challenge,” said Warsinger. “Thanks to all this numbercrunching,
we now have hard data which shows where
certain methods are feasible, and where they need
improvement. We’re excited to provide a literal map for
the future development of atmospheric water harvesting
technologies.”
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 27

News
Korean Firm Plans $2.5 Billion in New
Solar Panel Plants in Georgia
By Jeff Amy | Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) — A South Korean solar panel maker will
invest more than $2.5 billion to build factories in Georgia,
hiring 2,500 new employees and making components usually
manufactured outside the United States, the company
announced Wednesday, Jan. 11.
Qcells, a unit of Hanwha Solutions, will build a new
factory in Cartersville that will employ 2,000 people, with
construction starting within weeks and production starting
before the end of 2024.
The company also announced a third phase of its Dalton
plant, already the largest maker of solar panels in the
Western Hemisphere. Qcells will add nearly 500 jobs in
Dalton, raising employment above 1,500 once all expansions
are complete there.
“We are seeking to further expand our low-carbon solar
investments as we lead the industry towards fully Americanmade
clean energy solutions,” Qcells CEO Justin Lee said in a
statement.
Democratic President Joe Biden described the announcement
as “a win for workers, consumers, and our climate,” saying
in a statement that it would provide good jobs, reduce
American reliance on other countries for solar components,
lower the cost of solar panels and help lower carbon
emissions.
The Cartersville plant will fulfill one of the aims of the
climate change and health care bill that Biden signed in
August.
It included provisions from Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and
Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, allowing companies
making the components used in solar panels to claim tax
credits.
The Cartersville plant will assemble solar panels, silicon
ingots and wafers as well as solar cells. The company will use
polysilicon made at an REC Silicon plant in Moses Lake, Wash.
Hanwha last year bought 21 percent of REC, whose shares
are listed in Norway.
Brian Deese, director of Biden’s National Economic Council,
said such supply-chain integration will help break China’s
stranglehold on solar panel components and untie knots in
overseas supply chains.
Deese said the climate change and health care bill is an
example of the industrial policy Biden wants to see, “to
make sure that innovation is happening here, good job
creation is happening here, and we are exporting products in
the clean energy economy, not exporting jobs.”
Qcells now makes solar modules capable of generating
1.7 gigawatts of electricity each year at the Dalton plant.
Following the expansions, the company will make 8.4
gigawatts worth of modules, or about 10,000 solar panels.
That will include a capacity of 5.1 gigawatts in Dalton and
3.3 gigawatts in Cartersville.
“My goal remains to make Georgia the world leader in
advanced energy production,” Ossoff said in a statement.
The company has 750 people working at its existing Dalton
factory and Qcells announced plans last year for a second
$171 million phase, hiring 470 more workers.
Warnock, Ossoff and Biden administration officials say
Biden’s strategy is working to enhance the nation’s
manufacturing base as part of the transition to clean energy.
“By 2027, the Qcells expansion is projected to supply about
30 percent of total U.S. demand for solar panels,” Biden
clean energy adviser John Podesta told reporters. “I think it’s
fair to say that this deal is President Biden’s vision come to
life.”
The Biden administration says its policy has driven $300
billion in private investment by industries including
semiconductors, clean energy, electric vehicles and batteries,
with nearly $25 billion of that coming in Georgia. That
includes two $5 billion-plus electric vehicle plants, and a
$4 billion-plus battery plant announced for Cartersville in
December. Hyundai Motor Group is building one of the
vehicle plants and is partnering with fellow South Korean
firm SK Group to build the Cartersville battery plant.
Georgia economic development officials have particularly
promoted electric vehicles and batteries.
“Qcells has long been a pioneer in the solar industry,
and it solidified Georgia’s place as a leader in renewable
energy and sustainable technology when it cut the ribbon
on the largest solar panel manufacturing facility in the
Western Hemisphere in 2019,” state Economic Development
Commissioner Pat Wilson said in a statement.
28
| Chief Engineer

Special mounted solar panels are installed over a biological apple fruit tree plantation in Gelsdorf, western Germany, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2022. A South
Korean solar panel maker will invest more than $2.5 billion to build factories in Georgia, hiring 2,500 new employees and making components usually
manufactured outside the United States, the company announced Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)
Biden’s national climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, said U.S. factories
are on track to more than quadruple the output of solar
panels by 2024, from 7 gigawatts when Biden took office to
33.5 gigawatts. “That’s enough to enable about 5 million
homes to switch to clean solar energy each year,” Zaidi said.
The total incentive package from state and local
governments wasn’t immediately clear. But Qcells could
qualify for more than $65 million in state income tax credits,
at $5,250 per job over five years, as long as workers make at
least $31,300 a year. Local officials have said Qcells workers
in Dalton have starting wages of $17 an hour.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 29

News
Japan Adopts Plan to Maximize Nuclear
Energy, in Major Shift By Mari Yamaguchi | Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) — Japan adopted a plan on Thursday, Dec. 22,
to extend the lifespan of nuclear reactors, replace the old
and even build new ones, a major shift in a country scarred
by the Fukushima disaster that once planned to phase out
atomic power.
In the face of global fuel shortages, rising prices and pressure
to reduce carbon emissions, Japan’s leaders have begun to
turn back toward nuclear energy, but the announcement
was their clearest commitment yet after keeping mum on
delicate topics like the possibility of building new reactors.
Under the new policy, Japan will maximize the use of
existing reactors by restarting as many of them as possible
and prolonging the operating life of aging ones beyond a
60-year limit. The government also pledged to develop nextgeneration
reactors.
In 2011, a powerful earthquake and the ensuing tsunami
caused multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant
— a disaster that supercharged anti-nuclear sentiment in
Japan and at one point led the government to promise to
phase out the energy by around 2030. But since then, the
government has recommitted to the technology, including
setting a target for nuclear to make up 20-22% of the
country’s energy mix by the end of the decade.
Still, restart approvals for idled nuclear reactors have come
slowly since the Fukushima disaster, which led to stricter
safety standards. Utility companies have applied for restarts
at 27 reactors in the past decade. Seventeen have passed
safety checks and only 10 have resumed operation.
According the paper laying out the new policy, nuclear
power serves “an important role as a carbon-free baseload
energy source in achieving supply stability and carbon
neutrality” and pledged to “sustain use of nuclear power
into the future.” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he
planned to get the Cabinet to approve the policy and submit
necessary bills to Parliament.
As part of the new policy, the Economy and Industry Ministry
has drafted a plan to allow extensions every 10 years for
reactors after 30 years of operation while also permitting
utilities to subtract offline periods in calculating reactors’
operational life.
The plan was endorsed Dec. 21 by the Nuclear Regulation
Authority, Japan’s nuclear watchdog. New safety inspection
rules still need to be put into law and approved by
Parliament.
The regulation authority’s commissioner, Shinichi Yamanaka,
told a news conference the new safety rules requiring
operational permits every decade after 30 years will be
safer than a current one-time 20-year extension option for
40-year-old reactors. But experts cast some doubt on that.
Takeo Kikkawa, an economics professor at the International
University of Japan and an expert on energy, said utility
operators under the new policy could keep using old
equipment instead of investing in new technology or
renewables.
“Naturally, we should aim for newer technology and use
it safely. Therefore, extending reactors’ lifespans is an
undesirable move,” Kikkawa recently told a talk show.
Most nuclear reactors in Japan are more than 30 years old.
Four reactors that have operated for more than 40 years
have received permission to operate, and one is currently
online.
Under the new policy, Japan will also push for the
development and construction of “next-generation
innovative reactors” to replace about 20 reactors now set for
decommissioning.
Kenichi Oshima, a Ryukoku University professor of
environmental economy and energy policy, said some of
what the government calls “innovative” reactors are not so
different from existing technology and that prospects for
nuclear fusion and other next-generation reactors are largely
uncertain and not achievable anytime soon.
The Dec. 22 adoption of the new policy comes less than
four months after Kishida launched the “GX (Green
Transformation) Implementation Council” of outside experts
and ministers to “consider all options” to compile a new
policy that addresses global fuel shortages amid Russia’s war
on Ukraine and seeks to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Nuclear energy accounts for less than 7% of Japan’s energy
supply, and achieving the government’s goal of raising that
share to 20-22% by 2030 will require about 27 reactors,
from the current 10 — a target some say is not achievable.
The new policy also does not help address imminent supply
shortages because reactors cannot be restarted quickly
enough.
While public opinion on nuclear energy has softened since
Fukushima, opponents still argue atomic power is not
flexible and not even cheaper than renewables when final
waste management and necessary safety measures are
considered — and that it can cause immeasurable damage in
an accident.
30
| Chief Engineer

This aerial photo shows the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, north of Tokyo, on March 17, 2022. Japan on
Thursday, Dec. 22, adopted a new policy promoting greater use of nuclear energy to ensure a stable power supply amid global fuel shortages and reduce
carbon emissions — a major reversal of its phase-out plan since the Fukushima crisis. (Shohei Miyano/Kyodo News via AP, File)
Ruiko Muto, a survivor of the Fukushima disaster, called the
new policy “extremely disappointing.” She added: “The
Fukushima disaster is not over yet and the government seems
to have already forgotten what happened.”
The regulation authority came under fire Dec. 21 after
revelations by a civil group that a few of its experts had
discussed details with industry ministry officials before the
watchdog was officially asked to consider a rule change for
aging reactors, despite their compulsory independence.
Prime Minister Kishida also said that the government will do
more to find candidate sites for a final repository for highlevel
nuclear waste that Japan does not yet have. Preliminary
studies have begun in two small towns in Hokkaido,
angering some residents.
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Volume 87 · Number 11 | 31

News
Former Soldier Tasked With Getting
Navy Builder in Shipshape By David Sharp | Associated Press
BATH, Maine (AP) — Making the switch from building
corporate jets to building Navy warships has been
reinvigorating for a soldier-turned-business executive who’s
leading Navy shipbuilder Bath Iron Works.
Charles “Chuck” Krugh said he wasted no time in getting his
hands dirty, meeting daily with workers on the ships’ “deck
plates.”
“I’m a hands-on guy that likes to get into the details,” he
said.
Shipbuilders weren’t so sure at first whether it was just an
act, but after six months they’re now accustomed to him
regularly chatting with shipbuilders to get a handle on their
workflow, at all hours of the day and night.
Labor relations have improved along the way.
“It’s all been good. We’re moving in the right direction.
We’ve just got to keep moving that way,” said Rock Grenier,
president of Local S6 of the Machinists Union, which
represents production workers.
condition of the company upon his arrival.
Part of the improvement in relations with the union and
in shipbuilding efficiency was the rehiring of shipyard
veteran, David Clark, from Marinette Marine, to serve as vice
president of manufacturing, Grenier said.
“We’re doing everything we can to keep building those ships
faster and more efficient,” the union president said.
The shipyard is continuing to hire hundreds of new workers
to replace older workers who are retiring, and Krugh said
they’ll picking up the necessary skills to build the latest
versions of the Arleigh Burke destroyer along with the nextgeneration
destroyer in coming years.
Continual improvement made possible by cooperation
is necessary to assure the shipyard’s survival, said Loren
Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute.
Krugh, 58, arrived in June after the abrupt departure of
former Bath Iron Works President Dirk Lesko, who led the
General Dynamics subsidiary through a difficult period that
included a pandemic and a two-month strike, both of which
lengthened construction delays.
The future USS Carl M. Levin that completed acceptance
trials this month is more than a year behind schedule. The
silver lining, Krugh said, is that the warship earned the
highest marks for a Bath-built ship in years in a review by the
Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey.
Krugh said he’s encouraging the shipyard’s 7,000 workers
to rethink processes to ensure they can complete tasks as
efficiently as possible. A big part of that is ensuring proper
planning before a task even starts.
“We show people that you can do the impossible, or the
seemingly impossible, if you spend enough preparation time
to get things ready. So that’s the good news side of what
we’re doing, and we’re seeing a momentum building now,”
he said.
The Army veteran formerly served at Gulfstream, another
General Dynamics subsidiary, which builds business jets,
before being tasked with overseeing a historic shipyard that
dates to the late 1800s.
He said he was taken aback by labor relations and the
32 | Chief Engineer

Charles F. Krugh, president of Bath Iron Works, poses at the shipyard Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2022, in Bath, Maine. The former Gulfstream Aerospace executive
and U.S. Army veteran oversees a workforce that builds destroyers for the Navy. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
The future isn’t assured for the shipyard beyond the current
decade unless the shipyard continues to become more
competitive, Thompson said. Bath Iron Works competes with
the larger Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi for contracts to
build destroyers, the workhorse of the Navy.
“It is imperative for the union and management to get along
because if they don’t, the long-term consequences for the
yard could be fatal,” he said.
As for Krugh, he said some outsiders mistakenly suggested
he’d struggle with the transition from aerospace to
shipbuilding.
But he said he’s rejuvenated by being closer to the military —
and urged any critics to watch and see what happens at the
shipyard before casting judgment on the shipyard’s abilities.
“This is really personal for me. This is our country. We don’t
build mixers here. We’re building the warships that are going
to protect my family, your family and other Americans,” he
said.
Volume 88 · Number 1 | 33

News
Black Gold Is Goal for Virginia Biochar
Startup By Luke Weir, The Roanoke Times
FLOYD, Va. (AP) — Bio is business in this bucolic community,
where a high-tech biochar facility readies for production.
The wood-based biochar that Jack Wall and Jeff Wade are
readying to cook is turned into such pure carbon, you could
eat the stuff, Wall said. But there are better uses.
“This stuff is a sterile, pure product,” Wall said. “Of course,
you can make biochar out of things other than wood, but
we’re making ours exclusively out of wood because it’s a
better product.”
Biochar is made by burning organic matter without oxygen.
Computer-controlled kilns are used to maintain a natural
process called pyrolysis, which is just the decomposing of
materials by using heat.
At the site of SWVA Biochar, 30 specialized anaerobic kilns
will burn away all the saps, lignin and other materials inside
wood, after a few hours leaving just a black carbon husk as
the end product.
“You’re getting rid of everything except the carbon
structure,” Wall said. “It’s black and shiny, and that’s what
you’re left with.”
Biochar has properties kind of like activated charcoal, but it
is made through a very different process, he said. Wall, who
founded the nearby Floyd EcoVillage, is partnered with a
company in Colorado that developed a specialized process
used to make high-quality biochar.
“We’re only using waste wood products. Wood that is not
valuable for anything else, except maybe pulp for paper,”
Wall said. “We can even process things like treated lumber,
or railroad ties. Chemically treated things like that.”
The end product has all sorts of uses, from water filtration
to soil fertilization, said Wade, whose family has farmed in
Floyd for generations.
“We’re only scratching the surface,” Wade said. “I learn
something new every day about what we can use it for.”
On farms in Floyd, biochar has been used to keep livestock
water systems free of algae, he said. And biochar can absorb
odor, so it works to mitigate stink when spread in stables.
“I have fed this to my sheep, and in the ruminate it basically
binds up the bad bacteria, which allows your animal to get
more of the nutrients out of its food,” Wade said. “A little
bit is real good, but too much of it and you’ve got to trim
their hooves all the time.”
Beyond the farm, biochar’s use for water filtration is a
growing demand, Wall said. And studies suggest that biochar
used as an additive in concrete can improve the building
material’s strength.
“The concept of this stuff, it’s been around, but now it’s
taking off, and that’s why we’re trying to get into this thing
commercially, because the benefits are there,” Wall said.
“But the reason we originally got into this is because we
were talking about making biochar for a soil amendment.”
Wade said SWVA Biochar is applying for a fertilizer
production enhancement grant from the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. The plan is to use about 25,000 tons of chicken
manure per year, shipped from the Chesapeake Bay area, to
mix with biochar and create fertilizer.
“If you put this biochar into the chicken litter, then it will
absorb and stop the leaching of all these chemicals, and
holds it into the soil,” Wade said. “In the soil is good — that’s
where we want it. And it’ll bind to hold the ammonia, so
some of the smells of the manure are reduced.”
Chicken litter runoff from poultry farms in eastern Virginia
has been identified as a main cause of pollution in the
Chesapeake Bay. Wade said some chicken farms are
interested in putting the biochar directly into their coops.
“If we can put it right into the bedding with the chickens,
then when they take it out, it’s already inoculated, and now
you’ve just a supercharged fertilizer,” Wade said. “Of course,
getting it out of the Chesapeake Bay is a plus, that’s good for
the environment. It’s a win-win for everybody involved.”
The biochar chicken litter fertilizer aspect of business is part
of an effort by the federal government to move away from
industrial farming techniques, toward more sustainable,
regenerative agriculture practices, Wall said.
“Which is not needing the chemical fertilizers, not using the
pesticides and herbicides, because that kills the biology of
the soil,” Wall said. “If you put biochar in soil, then your soil
develops the capacity to retain water, to attract minerals, to
provide a home for the microbial fungi, things that are really
important for quality soil.”
It’s an issue that has become more pressing now, Wall
said. An October study published by Virginia Tech said
agricultural growth is in steep decline, and efforts to expand
sustainability are inadequate for a growing population.
34
| Chief Engineer

SWVA BioChar General Manager Jeff Wade discusses the biochar production process at the company’s production site in Floyd County Va. Dec. 20, 2022.
Bio is business in this bucolic community, where a high-tech biochar facility readies for production. (Matt Gentry/The Roanoke Times via AP)
“This product would be good even if not for climate
change,” Wall said. “But the whole thing gets really pushed
because of trying to deal with climate change.”
And there is potential to use the biochar pyrolysis process to
harness additional energy by capturing a byproduct called
syngas, but that will have to wait. For now, SWVA Biochar is
raring to get full-scale production underway, because it is a
business, after all.
“We originally thought we’d be up and running about six
months ago,” Wall said, adding that he plans to expand the
business to additional locations. “When we get started, it’s a
profitable business.”
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 35

News
India Approves $2.3 Billion to Develop
Green Hydrogen By Sibi Arasu | Associated Press
BENGALURU, India (AP) — The government has approved
$2.3 billion to support production, use and exports of green
hydrogen, aiming to make India a global hub for the nascent
industry.
The funding, announced Wednesday, Jan. 4, is a first step
toward establishing the capacity to make at least 5 million
metric tons of green hydrogen by the end of this decade.
Green hydrogen is hydrogen that is produced through the
electrolysis of water, powered by electricity generated from
renewable sources of energy. Most of the world’s hydrogen is
produced using fossil fuels, especially natural gas.
The aim of the funding initiative is “to make green hydrogen
affordable and bring down its cost over the next five years. It
will also help India reduce its emissions and become a major
exporter in the field,” said Anurag Thakur, India’s minister
for information and broadcasting.
Other aims are to create more than a half million new jobs,
attract more private investment into the sector, reduce fossil
fuel imports and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 million
metric tons.
Traffic moves on an expressway on the outskirts of New Delhi, India,
Wednesday, March 23, 2022, file photo.
Many of India’s leading renewable energy companies,
including companies owned by the Adani Group, Reliance
Industries and JSW Energy; public sector companies like
Indian Oil and NTPC Limited; and renewable-only companies
such as Renew power are investing in production of green
hydrogen.
Green hydrogen now amounts to a small fraction of global
hydrogen use, estimated to be about 70 million tons
per year. Most commercially produced hydrogen is grey
hydrogen, produced using fossil fuels, and blue hydrogen
that is also made using fossil fuels, but with the use of
carbon capture systems to reduce emissions. The production
of green hydrogen results in the emission of little to no
greenhouse gases.
In providing policy incentives for green hydrogen production,
India is following the lead of many other countries such as
China, the European Union and the United States. Energy
analysts expect manufacturing costs for green hydrogen to
fall significantly in the next few years and estimate the green
hydrogen market will grow 20-fold to $80 billion by the year
2030.
36
| Chief Engineer

EPA, Pipeline Operator Reach Deal to
Clean Up Kansas Spill
By Heather Hollingswort | Associated Press
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency
announced Monday, Jan. 9, that it has reached an agreement
with a pipeline operator to clean up a spill that dumped
14,000 bathtubs’ worth of crude oil into a rural Kansas creek.
The agency said in a news release that the Dec. 7 rupture
of the Keystone pipeline affected 3 ½ miles of the creek as
it flows through rural pastureland in Washington County,
about 150 miles northwest of Kansas City.
The order requires TC Oil Pipeline Operations Inc., whose
parent company is Canadian-based TC Energy, to recover oil
and oil-contaminated soil and vegetation and contain the
further spread of oil in the creek.
Meg McCollister, an EPA regional administrator, said in a
statement that the federal government and the state are
“committed to a thorough cleanup and restoration.”
The 2,700-mile Keystone system carries heavy crude oil
extracted from tar sands in western Canada to the Gulf Coast
and to central Illinois.
The cause of the 14,000-barrel spill hasn’t yet been
announced. Each barrel is 42 gallons, the size of a household
bathtub.
But U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat who
chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation
Committee, raised concerns in a letter Monday about the
decision to grant TC Energy a permit that allowed the
pressure inside parts of the Keystone system — including the
stretch through Kansas — to exceed the typical maximum
permitted levels.
“This latest spill is no surprise,” Cantwell told the deputy
administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety
Administration in demanding a review of the permit.
The spill was the largest onshore in nine years and larger
than 22 previous spills on the Keystone system combined,
according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.
The company and government officials have said drinking
water supplies were not affected. No one was evacuated,
and most of the Keystone system was back in operation in
eight days.
Concerns that spills could pollute waterways spurred
In this photo taken by a drone, cleanup continues in the area where the
ruptured Keystone pipeline dumped oil into a creek in Washington County,
Kan., Dec. 9, 2022. The Environmental Protection Agency announced
Monday, Jan., 9, 2023, that it has reached an agreement with a pipeline
operator to clean up a spill that dumped 14,000 bathtubs’ worth of crude
oil into a rural Kansas creek. (DroneBase via AP, File)
opposition to plans by TC Energy to build another crude
oil pipeline in the same system, the 1,200-mile Keystone
XL, across Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. President
Joe Biden’s cancellation of a permit for the project led the
company to pull the plug on the project last year.
Volume 87 · Number 12 | 37

I’ve been in the corrosion-mitigation game for more than 40
years. And if I could go back in time, I’d like to shake the
hand of the guy who thought it was a good idea to build the
vast majority of all water tanks in the United States, and the
world, out of carbon steel.
Why?
Because he is responsible for generating trillions of dollars, over
many decades, trying to keep the darn carbon steel from rusting.
Don’t get me started on bridges.
Of course, there were — and remain — financial reasons for
building water tanks out of carbon steel, but there have always
been workarounds. Galvanizing for bridges, a proper paint
job on the interior and exterior of water tanks, cladding with
fiberglass systems, cathodic protection, etc.
But there is a lack of industry incentive because a great deal of
money can be made by fixing rust, including by yours truly.
About 30 years ago, when I had a bit more hair on my head and
naiveté in my bones, I arranged a meeting with a large tank
manufacturer.
I thought that I had a great idea: When they would build a new
carbon steel tank to contain water, they would offer to paint the
interior. At the time, I was working with an industrial coating
vendor, and we made a good living coating the interior of
newish — between 7 and 10 years-old — water tanks because
the OEM paint job paint was failing.
My bright idea was for them to have us line the interior of their
tanks, and they could offer our 10-year, non-prorated guarantee.
They could charge more for the tanks, and then not have to go
back to do any welding repairs.
I think you can see what’s coming.
They looked at me like I had grass growing out of my ears.
They wanted no part of building a water tank that would not
need to be replaced for 30 or more years. With a paltry oneyear
warranty, the faster the paint failed (after the one-year
mark) and the faster the tank leaked or perforated, or needed
replacement, the more money they made.
So here we are.
How do we manage these assets that hold water and are made of
carbon steel?
1. Don’t remove the rust! I wish I had a Tesla for every call that
I’ve gotten over the decades that goes something like this: “Hey
Warren, so I’ve just taken over as a new chief engineer, and we
have these hot water tanks that have been in service for 30 years.
We inspected them, and they were dirty and covered with heavy
impacted rust, so we started a policy of cleaning them every
year. And the rust keeps coming back and now one of them has
a leak.”
Rust on carbon steel will actually protect the carbon steel
beneath it. Why? Because rust is iron oxide — it’s a different
material, and it does not rust or corrode.
38
| Chief Engineer

In this photo one can clearly see the advanced rust above the
waterline, however, the rate and incidence of corrosion below the
waterline was substantially less.
A previously lined tank that had an intact lining for more than a
decade. The heat from a welding job damaged the coating system,
leading to interior corrosion of the tank.
A cold-water storage tank that had been lined roughly 10 years
earlier. Although covered in scale and discolored, and even exhibiting
substantial blistering, there was virtually no corrosion taking place.
Advanced corrosion found in a domestic water tank in Downtown
Chicago. The tank had been previously coated, but not properly.
From a corrosion perspective, cleaning this tank would be a mistake, as
it would remove the existing rust which is actually slowing the rate of
corrosion.
The heat and thermocycling in this hot water storage tank caused the
blisters to crack, leading to corrosion. This tank required a complete
relining.
When nature has its way with carbon steel, iron oxide is the
result.
It’s the same reason why the Statue of Liberty is green and
doesn’t corrode. The tall lady is made of copper. When copper
corrodes, it turns into that ubiquitous green copper oxide. The
copper oxide, unlike iron oxide, is hard, and well-adhered to the
copper beneath it.
We all know that rust is poorly adhered to the substrate and is
friable. However, if you have a situation where the rust is stable
and undisturbed, leave it alone. It’s providing some level of
corrosion protection.
The problem, of course, readily seen, is with pipes where, over
time — typically decades — the rust very slowly builds and
occludes the pipe and water flow.
(Continued on pg. 40)
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 39

(Continued from pg. 39)
2. Inspect. Rust is insidious. As Neil Young famously titled one
of his albums, “rust never sleeps.” (And if you don’t know who
Neil Young is, you’re far too young to be reading this.) Even
though rust prevents further rust, it tends to be porous, friable
and delicate. For those assets whose failure would cause a serious
problem, any rusted areas, or potentially rusty areas must be
either remediated or inspected on a regular basis.
Tragically, we only have to search Google for bridge collapses,
most of which are due to undetected corrosion of carbon steel.
3. Understand how corrosion works. While corrosion is
a highly complex electrochemical process, mitigating it is
straightforward. Keep the water away.
In order for a metallic to corrode, let’s say carbon steel, we need
four things — ACME:
Anode
Cathode
Metallic Pathway
Electrolyte
Anodes, cathodes and the metallic pathway all reside within
the steel. That’s the bad news. The good news is that without
the electrolyte, nothing happens. However, if we introduce
the electrolyte, in our case water, and an electric current is
completed, it will lead to iron ions moving from the anode to the
cathode, causing the steel to corrode at the anode.
However — and here’s the good part — if you remove the
electrolyte, the electric circuit cannot be completed.
Remove the electrolyte, and corrosion stops.
I’d say that more than 99 percent of all paint and coating systems
function to prevent corrosion by simply keeping the water,
electrolyte, away from the steel.
When painting something in “atmospheric” conditions, like
in a boiler room, a water tank exterior, steel beams, etc., the
electrolyte is in the form of humidity. You can get away with a
thinner, less precise paint application. When trying to prevent
corrosion in a water tank or pipe, the coating system must,
typically, be thicker and far more precisely applied, due to the
density of the electrolyte.
As an engineer, another way to manage the electrolyte is to
manage the humidity.
We were hired to consult on the iconic Crown Fountain on
Michigan Avenue. The 6-story glass brick structures were having
corrosion issues (and algae issues) throughout the interior. Our
solution — a pretty slick one if I do say so myself — was to leave
the rust alone, and simply condition the air to keep the relatively
humidity (RH) below 42 percent. As long as the RH was kept
below 42 percent, rust could not find a foothold — ever.
A bridge support beam. In cities where road salt is used in winter,
corrosion can be dramatically accelerated, making the electrolyte
(water) far more efficient.
40
| Chief Engineer

CORROSION IN AND ON WATER PIPING
Corrosion on a pipe interior:
In the past couple of decades two technologies have
been developed and shown increasing promise for
managing internal corrosion issues in water pipes:
1. Cured in Place Piping (CIPP): These are hollow
sleeves (picture a hollow sausage casing) with a
resin in the space. The sleeve is pulled through
the pipe, sealed at both ends and pressurized
before hot water or steam is introduced into
the pipe to cure the resin. This process provides
a corrosion-proof barrier and repairs any
perforations that might be found in the pipe.
The downside is a loss of interior diameter due to
the thickness of the sleeve. Water flow, however,
is often increased by the smooth surface of the
new sleeve relative to the rust-encrusted pipe.
2. Spray in Place Piping (SIPP): In this case, a
section of pipe is selected and both ends are tied
to a system that allows blast grit to circulate
through the pipe.
The blast grit removes all the rust, cleans the
pipe and provides an anchor patter for the
installation of an NSF coating. After blasting, the
closed system then circulates an NSF-approved
resin to coat the interior of the pipe.
Corrosion on a pipe exterior:
This could be a book, let alone an article, but let’s
cover the basics.
Preventing corrosion on a pipe exterior is simple
if the pipe doesn’t get wet. For example, hot water
pipes typically don’t rust on the outside because
water doesn’t tend to condense on them. Cold water
pipes, however, often have condensate on them,
leading to rust.
A common solution is to insulate cold water pipes.
This typically works just fine. However, it can also
cause a very, very serious, invisible-until-too-late
process called corrosion under insulation (CUI). CUI
is a multibillion-dollar headache in the petrochemical
industry for a variety of reasons too complex to
review here, but the takeaway is that if you choose
to insulate the pipes, inspect them! Remove the
insulation once and a while and take a look.
The main issue with various types of insulation is that
they can hold moisture against the pipe, accelerating
corrosion rather than preventing it.
Solutions for exterior pipe issues include paint, of
course, but there is a plethora of tape wraps that
work like a charm. There are wax tapes (a technology
used on sailing ships hundreds of years ago),
newer petrolatum tapes, and other wraps that do
remarkably well in preventing corrosion.
In closing, rust will always be a challenge threatening many different assets and systems in all facilities. Corrosion is, in
fact, everywhere. I will be attending a meeting at NASA within the next few months to discuss just that.
But understanding the fundamentals is the first start in creating a strategy to keep rust in its lane.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 41

News
SolarEdge Begins Shipment of New
Battery Cell Line for Stationary Energy
Storage Applications
MILPITAS, Calif. — SolarEdge Technologies, a global leader
in smart energy technology, announced today that its Energy
Storage division has begun shipping new battery cells
designed for stationary energy storage applications.
The new line of Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) pouch
cells, manufactured at Sella 2, the Company’s new battery
cell manufacturing facility in South Korea, has been
optimized for energy storage applications for the residential,
commercial and utility scale segments. The cells support high
cycle life (up to 8,000 cycles), high energy density, highpower
throughput and a wide temperature range without
compromising operational life, enabling SolarEdge to
provide battery solutions that support a broad range of use
cases, including demanding grid-stability applications.
Ronen Faier, SolarEdge Chief Financial Officer and General
Manager of SolarEdge Energy Storage division, commented:
“The global stationary storage market is estimated to grow
from approximately 45GWh in 2022 to 164GWh by 2030,
and SolarEdge is focused on supporting this critical segment.
Owning key processes and cell chemistries will allow us to
further secure the resilience of our supply chain and provides
us with the flexibility to produce cells optimized for various
energy storage solutions.”
SolarEdge battery cells are manufactured at Sella 2, the company’s new battery cell manufacturing facility in South Korea.
42
| Chief Engineer

SolarEdge, Sunnova Expand Partnership;
Include SolarEdge Home Battery in
Sunnova’s Energy as a Service Portfolio
HOUSTON, Texas and MILPITAS, Calif. — SolarEdge
Technologies, a global leader in smart energy technology,
and Sunnova Energy International, a leading U.S. Energy as
a Service (EaaS) provider, recently announced the expansion
of their long-standing partnership with the addition of the
SolarEdge Home Battery to the Sunnova EaaS portfolio. The
expansion of the partnership will enable Sunnova’s network
of dealers to offer the SolarEdge Home Battery, in order
to better meet homeowners’ demand for increased energy
efficiency and resiliency — crucial in the current climate of
energy price inflation and grid instability.
The SolarEdge Home Battery’s highly efficient DC-coupled
design requires just one power conversion when consuming
PV stored energy, compared to three with AC-coupled
batteries. This can add up to 10 days of saved energy for
every year of use when compared to a typical 10kW PV
system in self consumption mode. In addition, the SolarEdge
Home Battery provides continuous power, enabling
consumers to power more and larger devices, such as
washing machines and HVACs, for longer periods of time.
“Sunnova’s extensive network of dealers now have access to
our highly efficient, high-power DC battery that will enable
homeowners to take even greater control of their energy
usage and power more of their lives with clean, renewable
solar energy,” commented Zvi Lando, CEO, SolarEdge
Technologies. “We look forward to building on our successful
relationship with Sunnova to help unlock the full potential
of solar power for additional homeowners across the U.S.”
Each SolarEdge Home Battery provides 9.7kWh of backup
capacity and up to nine batteries (three per inverter) can
be stacked on a single backup system, for up to 87.3kWh of
backup capacity and 30kW of continuous power. The battery
is compliant with the UL9540A advanced safety standard. It
is also designed to meet installer demand for a residential
solution that is fast and cost effective to install. Accessible
cable management and wireless communication speed up
installation and decrease commissioning times.
William J. (John) Berger, founder and Chief Executive Officer
of Sunnova commented: “Homeowners’ energy demands
are increasing at a time when utility bills are skyrocketing,
and grid instability is becoming more frequent. The addition
of the SolarEdge Home Battery to our Energy as a Service
offering marks an important next step forward in our
mission to deliver highly robust, industry-leading solutions
that meet homeowner demand to live in a more energyefficient
and energy-independent way.”
The SolarEdge Home Battery offers more backup power compared to ACcoupled
battery solutions.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 43

News
Judge Rules Against Moratorium on
Carbon Capture Project
LIVINGSTON, La. (AP) — A south Louisiana parish cannot
enforce a moratorium blocking a global gas supply company
from conducting seismic tests or building test wells in Lake
Maurepas, a federal judge has ruled.
Air Products sued Livingston Parish’s government in October
for adopting a 12-month moratorium on Class V injection
wells, which are used to inject non-hazardous materials
underground, and “detonation of charges for seismic
testing,” even though it had received permits from the state
to perform both in the lake, The Advocate reported.
U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District Court of
Louisiana ruled Dec. 26 in favor of a motion for a preliminary
injunction against the moratorium and denied Livingston
Parish’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, giving the company
the go-ahead to continue the project as planned.
The project has been the subject of controversy for most of
2022. Initial protests centered on the company obtaining an
operating agreement with state agencies amid Hurricane
Ida’s devastation, which many in Livingston, Tangipahoa, and
other surrounding parishes say caused them not to have the
proper chance to object to the project’s approval.
Opponents also expressed fears on how carbon capture
and sequestration could affect Lake Maurepas’ plethora of
wildlife and its recreational boating industry.
Air Products has tried to address those concerns through
ongoing public informational meetings, weekly project
updates via social media and seismic test demonstrations.
Ricks told The Advocate Jan. 3 that he needs to speak with
Moody about plans moving forward regarding the lawsuit.
Air Products plans to open a $4.5 billion hydrogen
manufacturing complex in Ascension Parish by 2026
that would store its carbon output a mile beneath Lake
Maurepas. State officials and industry experts have
welcomed carbon capture and sequestration projects as a
means of meeting net-zero carbon emissions goals.
In order to obtain the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
permits necessary to complete the project, the company must
take preliminary measurements of the subsurface through
seismic surveys and Class V injection wells. Seismic testing in
the lake began in December and will run through the spring.
The two Class V injection wells slated for this project will be
built within the bounds of Livingston and St. John parishes to
collect geotechnical data for the company.
Art George, Air Product’s communications director, said the
company is pleased with the judge’s ruling.
“We remain committed to continuing to share information
with all local parish councils, elected and regulatory
officials and local residents about Air Products’ clean energy
project and its environmental and economic benefits, and
employment opportunities,” he said.
Livingston councilmembers originally passed the moratorium
so they could have more time to research and regulate
carbon sequestration projects to ensure residents’ safety.
Livingston Parish President Layton Ricks said the judge’s
ruling was expected, noting Parish Attorney Chris Moody
advised the council when it passed the moratorium that
it likely would not hold up in court because of the state’s
jurisdiction over the project.
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| Chief Engineer

Minnesota’s First Possible Carbon
Pipeline Clears Hurdle
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota’s first possible carbon
capture pipeline must undergo an environmental review, the
state’s Public Utilities Commission said Thursday, Jan. 6, as
members unanimously approved the pipeline’s route permit
application.
The proposed pipeline would stretch 28 miles from Green
Plains Ethanol Plant near Fergus Falls to Breckenridge, then
into North Dakota, Minnesota Public Radio reported. It’s one
piece of a $4.5 billion project that would capture carbon
dioxide emissions across neighboring states and deposit the
emissions deep underground in North Dakota.
The environmental review will allow members of the public
to comment and ask questions about the proposed pipeline.
Landowners, tribal representatives and other stakeholders
have asked for months how the pipeline would impact their
water sources, farmland and neighboring communities.
power to regulate underground wells used for long-term
storage of waste carbon dioxide. North Dakota was the first
state to be given such power, the Environmental Protection
Agency said in announcing the move. The state has since
invested heavily in carbon capture and sequestration
technology.
Germany is also working on legislation to enable the use
of underground carbon storage, a top government official
said Jan. 6, adding that it is preferable to releasing carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere.
The technology has yet to be deployed at scale. Opponents
maintain it is unproven and has been less effective than
alternatives such as solar and wind at decarbonizing the
energy sector.
“This project will open new economic opportunities for
ethanol producers, strengthen the agricultural marketplace
for farmers, and significantly reduce greenhouse gas
emissions,” Summit Carbon Solutions, the group that
submitted the pipeline’s permit application, said in a
statement.
The group said it has secured almost 4,000 easements for the
pipeline, representing 57 percent of the proposed route.
Larry Liepold, whose family rents farmland near an ethanol
plant in Heron Lake, Minn., said he hopes farmers will be
treated respectfully during this process, whether they sign an
easement agreement or not.
The Trump administration in 2018 gave North Dakota the
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 45

News
Federal Utility Chooses Gas Plant
Despite EPA Concerns By Travis Loller | Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The nation’s largest public utility
has decided to build a new natural gas plant despite
concerns from the Environmental Protection Agency that
its analysis of alternatives is faulty and that the project is at
odds with President Biden’s clean energy goals.
Tennessee Valley Authority President and CEO Jeff Lyash on
Tuesday, Jan. 10, signed a decision to move forward with a
1,450-megawatt natural gas plant at the site of the utility’s
coal-burning Cumberland Fossil Plant, near Cumberland City,
Tennessee. TVA plans to retire the first of two coal burning
units there by the end of 2026 and plans to have the gas
plant up and running before then.
TVA provides power to 10 million people in parts of seven
Southern states.
The utility provided the EPA with a final environmental
impact statement in early December analyzing alternatives
for replacing the Cumberland plant. It compared the costs
and benefits of two types of natural gas plants as well as a
solar array with battery storage. The analysis recommended
a combined cycle natural gas plant as the preferred
alternative. It determined that the solar array would cost
$1.8 billion more and could not be completed by the utility’s
2026 deadline.
“Replacing retired generation with a natural gas plant is the
best overall solution because it’s the only mature technology
available today that can provide firm, dispatchable power by
2026 when the first Cumberland unit retires — ‘dispatchable’
meaning TVA can turn it off and on as the system requires
the power,” Lyash said in a Jan. 10 statement.
The EPA issued a detailed response to the analysis on Friday,
writing that TVA relied on “inaccurate underlying economic
information” and “may continue to underestimate the
potential costs of the combined cycle gas plant and overstate
the cost of solar and storage.”
TVA used a “misleading” measure of comparison to show
that solar and storage would be more expensive than
gas, according to EPA. TVA also failed to account for the
opportunities presented by recent federal legislation
providing $375 billion over 10 years for clean energy
projects. And TVA failed to consider that the cost of
renewables is declining while gas prices are expected to rise,
the EPA said.
In addition to the economic analysis, the EPA is critical
of TVA’s environmental analysis. The utility found similar
greenhouse gas impacts for solar and gas. When factoring
in the social costs of greenhouse gases, TVA found the solar
alternative would save $4.8 billion over the “no action”
alternative — that is, keeping the coal plant in place — while
the combined cycle gas plant would save $4.4 billion.
But the EPA said TVA used outdated social cost estimates and
falsely asserted that there is “legal uncertainty” around the
newest estimates.
Although TVA stated that the environmental impacts are
relatively close for all alternatives, the utility’s own analysis
results in a $3 billion difference between gas and solar over
the 30-year life of the project, according to the EPA.
“Moreover, the document does not reflect the urgent need
to take climate action” despite TVA’s own strategic plan
calling for a “deep carbon reduction,” EPA states.
Biden has set a goal of a carbon-pollution-free energy
sector by 2035 that TVA has said it can’t achieve without
technological breakthroughs in nuclear generation and
energy storage. TVA has set a goal to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by 80 percent by 2035, compared with 2005 levels.
Scientists have warned that failing to meet the 2035 target
will only lead to more intense and more frequent extreme
weather events, as well as droughts, floods and wildfires.
Teams of meteorologists across the world have predicted
there is nearly a 50-50 chance that Earth will hit a key
warming mark that international agreements have tried to
prevent by 2026.
EPA’s letter states that TVA failed to incorporate several
suggested improvements, including using energy efficiency
and demand management to reduce the need for new
electricity. Demand management helps customers change
their usage patterns to flatten peak demand periods
and could “help avoid rolling blackouts like those TVA
implemented recently,” EPA wrote.
The Cumberland plant and a second coal-burning plant,
Bull Run, went offline during a deep freeze over Christmas
weekend. Along with unspecified “issues” at some of TVA’s
gas plants, the outages forced TVA to resort to rolling
blackouts for the first time in its 90-year history. TVA has said
it is investigating what went wrong but has provided few
details.
TVA did seem to take one of EPA’s suggestions into
consideration. Lyash’s Jan. 10 decision in favor of the
gas plant says the utility will design it to accommodate
modifications that would allow it to capture carbon and use
hydrogen fuel if those become viable options in the future.
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| Chief Engineer

Already, TVA is facing a lawsuit that claims it violated
federal law by approving a gas-power plant that is under
construction at its retired coal-burning Johnsonville Fossil
Plant without properly assessing the environmental and
climate impacts.
The Center for Biological Diversity issued a statement Jan.
10 calling for TVA’s board of directors to take action. Six
new Biden-appointed board members were sworn in Jan. 5,
making up a majority of the utility’s nine-member board of
directors. However, a previous board had already delegated
the decision on the Cumberland plant to Lyash.
“TVA’s gas plants failed miserably during the December
storm, and now its CEO is making the grave mistake of
doubling down on fossil fuels,” Gaby Sarri-Tobar, with the
Center for Biological Diversity’s energy justice program,
said in a news release. “Our country’s largest federal utility
is dependent on fossil fuels when it should be leading the
transition to 100-percent renewable energy.”
TVA also plans to retire Cumberland’s second coal-burning
unit by the end of 2028. The utility has not yet said how it
will replace the power lost from that retirement.
Tennessee Valley Authority President Jeff Lyash speaks with the
Chattanooga Times Free Press from the TVA Chattanooga Office Complex
in Chattanooga, Tenn., April 23, 2019. On Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023, TVA,
the nation’s largest public utility, signed a decision to build a new natural
gas plant, despite concerns from the Environmental Protection Agency
that its analysis of alternatives is faulty and that the project is at odds with
President Joe Biden’s clean energy goals. (C.B. Schmelter/Chattanooga
Times Free Press via AP, File)
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 47

Member News
Emecole Metro Breaks Ground with
Expansion of Facility Headquarters
Emecole Metro, a subsidiary of Metropolitan Industries, has
begun construction on a new 15,000-square-foot addition to
their facility headquarters in Romeoville, Ill. The completed
expansion will allow for additional manufacturing and
storage, enhancing their long-term efforts at servicing
basement waterproofing and building construction
professionals.
The company-owned facility has been Emecole Metro’s home
since May 2018, following an extensive gutting and rehab of
the office space. The facility houses their team of office and
production personnel, and regularly welcomes contractors
from across the United States and Canada attending their
product training workshops.
Emecole Metro is an extension of Metropolitan Industries,
which specializes in the design and prefabrication of
packaged pumping and control systems. Also headquartered
in Romeoville, with an additional facility in Albany, N.Y.,
Metropolitan Industries’ engineered solutions presently
move and manage water through many prominent
municipalities and commercial buildings across the United
States.
The new addition carries on since breaking ground, and we
are looking forward to its completion, expected this spring.
Metropolitan Industries subsidiary Emecole Metro is in the process of adding 15,000 sq. ft. to their facility headquarters in Romeoville, Ill.
48
| Chief Engineer

Volume 88 · Number 2 | 49

Techline
CES 2023: Smelling, Touching Take
Center Stage in Metaverse
By Haleluya Hadero and Rio Yamat | Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Is the metaverse closer than we think?
It depends on who you ask at CES, where companies are
showing off innovations that could immerse us deeper into
virtual reality, otherwise known as VR.
The metaverse — essentially a buzzword for threedimensional
virtual communities where people can meet,
work and play — was a key theme during the recent fourday
tech gathering in Las Vegas.
Taiwanese tech giant HTC unveiled a high-end VR headset
that aims to compete with market leader Meta, and a slew
of other companies and startups touted augmented reality
glasses and sensory technologies that can help users feel —
and even smell — in a virtual environment.
Among them, Vermont-based OVR Technology showcased
a headset containing a cartridge with eight primary
aromas that can be combined to create different scents. It’s
scheduled to be released later this year.
An earlier, business-focused version used primarily for
marketing fragrances and beauty products is integrated
into VR goggles and allows users to smell anything from a
romantic bed of roses to a marshmallow roasting over a fire
at a campsite.
The company says it aims to help consumers relax and is
marketing the product, which comes with an app, as a sort of
digital spa mixed with Instagram.
“We are entering an era in which extended reality will drive
commerce, entertainment, education, social connection,
and wellbeing,” the company’s CEO and co-founder
Aaron Wisniewski said in a statement. “The quality of
these experiences will be measured by how immersive and
emotionally engaging they are. Scent imbues them with an
unmatched power.”
But more robust and immersive uses of scent — and its close
cousin, taste — are still further away on the innovation
spectrum. Experts say even VR technologies that are more
accessible are in the early days of their development and too
expensive for many consumers to purchase.
The numbers show there’s waning interest. According to the
research firm NPD Group, sales of VR headsets, which found
popular use in gaming, declined by 2 percent last year, a sour
note for companies betting big on more adoption.
Still, big companies like Microsoft and Meta are investing
billions. And many others are joining the race to grab
some market share in supporting technologies, including
wearables that replicate touch.
Customers, though, aren’t always impressed by what they
find. Ozan Ozaskinli, a tech consultant who traveled more
than 29 hours from Istanbul to attend CES, suited up with
yellow gloves and a black vest to test out a so-called haptics
product, which relays sensations through buzzes and
vibrations and stimulates our sense of touch.
Ozaskinli was attempting to punch in a code on a keypad
that allowed him to pull a lever and unlock a box containing
a shiny gemstone. But the experience was mostly a letdown.
“I think that’s far from reality right now,” Ozaskinli said.
“But if I was considering it to replace Zoom meetings, why
not? At least you can feel something.”
Proponents say widespread adoption of virtual reality will
ultimately benefit different parts of society by essentially
unlocking the ability to be with anyone, anywhere at any
time. Though it’s too early to know what these technologies
can do once they fully mature, companies looking to achieve
the most immersive experiences for users are welcoming
them with open arms.
Aurora Townsend, the chief marketing officer at Flare, a
company slated to launch a VR dating app in February called
Planet Theta, said her team is building its app to incorporate
more sensations like touch once the technology becomes
more widely available on the consumer market.
“Being able to feel the ground when you’re walking with
your partner, or holding their hands while you’re doing
that. subtle ways we engage people will change once haptic
technology is fully immersive in VR,” Townsend said.
Still, it’s unlikely that many of these products will become
widely used in the next few years, even in gaming, said
Matthew Ball, a metaverse expert. Instead, he said the
pioneers of adoption are likely to be fields that have higher
budgets and more precise needs, such as bomb units using
haptics and virtual reality to help with their work and others
in the medical field.
50
| Chief Engineer

PROBLEM?
SOLVED.
There’s a reason why so
many prefer us.
Attendees wear VR headsets while previewing the Caliverse Hyper-Realistic
Metaverse experience at the Lotte booth during the CES tech show Friday,
Jan. 6, 2023, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
In 2021, Johns Hopkins neurosurgeons said they used
augmented reality to perform spinal fusion surgery and
remove a cancerous tumor from a patient’s spine.
And optical technology from Lumus, an Israeli company
that makes AR glasses, is already being used by underwater
welders, fighter pilots and surgeons who want to monitor a
patient’s vital signs or MRI scans during a procedure without
having to look up at several screens, said David Goldman, vice
president of marketing for the company.
Meanwhile, Xander, a Boston-based startup which makes
smart glasses that display real-time captions of in-person
conversations for people with hearing loss, will launch a
pilot program with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
in February to test out some of its technology, said Alex
Westner, the company’s co-founder and CEO. He said the
agency will allow veterans who have appointments for
hearing loss or other audio issues to try out the glasses in
some of their clinics. And if it goes well, the agency would
likely become a customer, Westner said.
Elsewhere, big companies from Walmart to Nike have been
launching different initiatives in virtual reality. But it’s unclear
how much they can benefit during the early stages of the
technology. The consulting firm McKinsey says the metaverse
could generate up to $5 trillion by 2030. But outside of
gaming, much of today’s VR use remains somewhat of a
marginal amusement, said Michael Kleeman, a tech strategist
and visiting scholar at the University of California San Diego.
“When people are promoting this, what they have to answer
is — where’s the value in this? Where’s the profit? Not what’s
fun, what’s cute and what’s interesting.”
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Volume 88 · Number 2 | 51

Techline
Best of CES 2023: Wireless TV, Delivery
Robots and In-Car VR
By James Brooks, Adriana Morga and Rio Yamat | Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Tech companies of all sizes are showing
off their latest products at CES, formerly known as the
Consumer Electronics show.
The show is getting back to normal after going completely
virtual in 2021 and seeing a significant drop in 2022
attendance because of the pandemic.
On Wednesday, Jan. 4, big names like LG and Samsung were
showcasing their latest products for the media in Las Vegas.
Smaller startups were due to exhibit at an event later that
day.
Some highlights:
No Messy Wires
LG Electronics unveiled a 97-inch OLED TV with what it calls
a Zero Connect Box that streams content wirelessly. The box,
which still needs to be plugged in, just needs to be within 30
feet of the display.
But why would anyone want a wireless 4K television?
David M. Park, senior marketing manager at the South
Korean tech company, says it means owners can place a TV in
the center of the room without all the messy wires, or maybe
mount it above a fireplace or perhaps on a hard-to-drill
concrete wall.
LG says the 97-inch LG Signature OLED M (model M3) will be
available in the second half of 2023. Pricing has not yet been
announced.
Robot Deliveries
Picture yourself weaving through crowds at the airport on a
busy holiday weekend, ignoring the rumble in your stomach
as you speed past restaurants to make it to your gate on
time.
Brooklyn-based Ottonomy.io is looking to ease that all-toofamiliar
travel anxiety with its fully autonomous delivery
robots.
If you’re traveling through airports in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh
or Rome, for example, you might cross paths with one of
these robots as they bring food directly to travelers at their
gates.
52
| Chief Engineer
A member of the media films the Ottobot Yeti as it operates before the
start of the CES tech show, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023, in Las Vegas.
Ottonomy unveiled its newest robot, the Yeti, on Jan. 4 at
CES. It showed off its new self-dispensing feature, which
eliminates the need for a human to be present to collect
deliveries.
The company also provides outdoor curbside delivery services
up to 4 miles.
Ottonomy co-founder and CEO Ritukar Vijay said the price
tag on its services varies depending on the number of robots
a company wants to deploy and how many restaurants or
retailers are included in the delivery footprint.
VR For Your Car
Holoride, based in Munich, Germany, wants to make car
rides more fun and less dizzy. The company’s VR headset
allows passengers to play video games, watch Netflix or scroll
through Instagram while they ride.
If the car is moving, you move in the virtual world, helping
to prevent car sickness, according to co-founder Daniel
Profendiner. Rather than seeing the road, you might be
flying and fighting robots or swimming under the sea.
“The car industry is super-focused on the driver but with
more autonomous driving on the horizon, the passenger gets
more into the focus as well,” he said.
Previously, holoride was only available for Audis with an
in-system retrofit so the headset could recognize when the
car was moving. On Jan. 4 at CES, the company announced a
new product that can be used in any car.
The retrofit pack, which includes the VR headset, holoride
retrofit, a safety strap and a one-year subscription to
holoride, is $799.

College of DuPage Fashion Students
Design PPE for Fermilab’s Boston
Dynamics Spot Robot
When deciding to pursue Fashion Studies at College of
DuPage, Rahaf Damra never thought she would be tasked
with designing protective gear for a robot. Much less,
Fermilab’s recently acquired Boston Dynamic Spot robot.
“It’s not what you typically come to fashion school for, but
it’s been an absolutely amazing experience,” she said.
Damra, along with a small group of Fashion Studies
students and COD Fashion Studies Professor Eva Stevens, are
working in collaboration with Fermilab engineers to design
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for Spot who works in
radioactive and contaminated areas.
Fermilab’s Engineering Physicist Adam Watts said that when
they had the idea of getting PPE for Spot, they knew they
needed to bring in the experts to design a prototype that
could then be manufactured at Fermilab.
“We always gravitate towards working with students
because they bring in energy and creativity to the job that
we just can’t,” he said. “Fermilab already had a strong
working relationship with COD, so we knew we would be
getting the best and the brightest minds.”
After a trip to see Spot at Fermilab to get measurements and
specifications, the students got to work.
“Spot has a camera, sensors and air returns for keeping cool,
so all of these areas had to be considered,” said Damra.
“Spot is also limber and has pinch points at his elbows and
joints connected to his body so that added another level of
complication.”
After many months of working on prototypes on a makeshift
cardboard box, Spot came to COD for a final fitting. The final
prototype consists of Tyvek PPE held together with tape,
staples and rivets.
“We had to think about how the robot would bend in
it, how the shoulders would attach, and how it would fit
around the body,” said Fashion Studies student Lauren Evans.
“We also had to think about how to put it on, and removing
it. Seeing the robot in person has been really great so we can
make any last updates and tweaks before we draw up our
final plans.”
(L to R): COD Fashion Studies Professor Eva Stevens, Fermilab Engineering
Physicist Adam Watts and COD Fashion Studies student Lauren Evans.
“There’s so many things that happen when a design student
has a complex problem to solve,” she said. “When working
on a garment for a human body, they’re used to that, but
now they have to take all that knowledge and transform it
for a robot, something that’s hard and something that has
really specific requirements. Their critical thinking skills were
taxed to the max.”
Never in Stevens’ storied career as a fashion designer and
professor did she think her paths would cross with a science
laboratory.
“I never, never thought Fermilab and the COD Fashion
Studies program would be partners,” she said. “It was
such a unique opportunity, and I was so thankful that they
reached out to us. Hopefully this opens the doors for further
collaboration.”
Stevens said that from a creativity standpoint, she couldn’t
have asked for a better project for her students.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 53

Techline
New Sensor Can Prevent Defects in
Major Structures Reaching Costly and
Dangerous Levels
Researchers at Bournemouth University have developed and
patented a new corrosion sensor that could improve safety
and reliability of large structures such as bridges, aircraft,
military vehicles and gas pipelines.
The device can detect defects and risks in major
infrastructure at a much earlier stage than the methods
that are currently used. As well as improving safety, it could
reduce the need for time consuming repairs which can come
at significant cost and inconvenience to industries and the
public.
“Our doctors often encourage us to take health screenings
regularly, so they can diagnose conditions at an early stage
which gives us better options for treatment,” says Zulfiqar
Khan, Professor of Design Engineering and Computing at
Bournemouth University, who led the development.
remotely; it works on metallic and non-metallic surfaces, and
can detect defects several millimeters below the surface that
are not visible to the naked eye.”
Professor Khan’s product is the latest development from a
series of research projects which began more than a decade
ago at the Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset.
The museum holds one of the most significant collections
of tanks and military vehicles in the world. Professor Khan’s
team applied their expertise to develop a means to monitor
corrosion in the vehicles to help preserve their cultural
heritage.
This work ultimately led to the development of a £2.5 million
“This sensor works on the same principal,” he continues. “If
we can spot health risks in vehicles and mechanical structures
before corrosion reaches an advanced and dangerous stage,
we can avoid costly, lengthy repairs and hopefully prevent
structures from being scrapped altogether.”
While other corrosion sensors are used by industry — some
can even be bought on eBay — they all require cables to be
plugged in to a computer. This means that maintenance must
take place with a worker present at the site.
On the other hand, Professor Khan’s device is wireless, so it
can be attached to a structure and its readings continuously
monitored offsite.
As a further benefit, the sensor can be used on any kind of
surface, whereas most current devices only work on metallic
surfaces through which the electricity from the sensor must
pass.
“The aerospace industry, for example, would prefer a sensor
which can detect failures beneath non-metallic coatings,”
explains Professor Khan. “Currently, this involves removing a
patch of the non-conductive coating to make the conductive
surface available — this could be counterproductive, as it can
initiate corrosion more rapidly.
“Unmonitored failures lead to costly consequences,” he adds.
“Scheduled inspections are tedious, time consuming, and are
mostly limited to visual or surface failures. Our latest sensor
technology is a futuristic, much-needed solution. It can work
54
| Chief Engineer

The wireless corrosion detector was tested on a footbridge and an automobile, and the results published in a peer-reviewed journal, leading the group to
have the opportunity to test corrosion using micro-LPR probes on historical tanks.
conservation center for the most at-risk tanks. The team also
identified maintenance work which could be carried on some
tanks so they could be driven safely at showgrounds and the
public could see them in action.
The team then secured funding in 2016 to work with
infrastructure companies in the U.S., where the technology
enhanced their business and brought commercial benefits.
The technology has now been granted patents in the U.K.
and the U.S., and Professor Khan and his team are keen to
work with partners so that it can be rolled out across various
industries, and engineering and construction companies
can start realizing the benefits. As well as benefits for
operational infrastructure, the device would be a boon to
companies with large fleets of vehicles or machinery that
may be kept in depots and not regularly used or serviced.
“It is a bit like coming home from work and deciding you
want some food that has been at the back of the cupboard,
only to find that it is past its use-by date,” Professor Khan
says. “Our device can continually monitor mechanical
structures to ensure they always remains in date and will not
have to be thrown out.”
Anyone interested in finding out more about the sensor and
its potential applications in industry can contact Professor
Khan on zkhan@bournemouth.ac.uk.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 55

New Products
Pipe Beveling Machine Clamps Easily,
Self-Centers and Squares
A pipe beveler that is easy to operate for performing
precision end preps on pipe from 4.5” I.D to 24” O.D. to
assure high-integrity welds has been introduced by Esco Tool
of Holliston, Massachusetts.
The Dictator II MILLHOG® Pipe Beveler is an I.D. clamping
welding end prep tool that aligns perfectly using selfcentering
clamps and can incorporate four blades in order to
bevel, face, and bore or create a compound bevel. Featuring
an adjustable tool post for easily indexing the blades, it can
perform 37.5º to 10º compound bevels on a 24” O.D. pipe
with a 2” thick wall and is offered with air, electric, and
hydraulic powered motors.
Equipped with a patented safety spring hanger for easy
positioning and clamping, the Dictator II MILLHOG Pipe
Beveler uses one mandrel and a set of three wide clamps that
provide six points of contact to the pipe I.D. to mount rigidly
and ensure chatter-free operation. This machine requires no
cutting oils and is well-suited for use in fabrication shops or
on-site.
The Dictator II MILLHOG Pipe Beveler is priced from
$23,995.00 and is available for rent from $695.00 per week.
For more information contact:
Esco Tool – A Unit of Esco Technologies, Inc., Matthew
Brennan, Marketing Director
75 October Hill Rd., Holliston, MA 01746, call (800) 343-6926,
FAX (508) 429-2811, e-mail matt@escotool.com or visit
www.escotool.com
Esco Tools’ Dictator II MILLHOG® Pipe Beveler features a patented safety
spring hanger for easy positioning and clamping, as well as self-centering
clamps to align itself.
HUDSON BOILER & TANK CO.
BOILER & PRESSURE VESSEL REPAIRS -- REFRACTORY REPAIR
STACKS -- BREECHINGS -- DUCTS -- STEEL PLATE FABRICATORS & ERECTORS
TANKS -- SHOP BUILT AND/OR FIELD ERECTED
ASME OR NON-CODE, STATE & CITY LICENSED AND INSURED
3101 S. State St. ---- Lockport, IL 60441
(312)666-4780 -- FAX (312)666-5145 -- Website: www.hudsonboiler.com
Info@Hudsonboiler.com
56
| Chief Engineer

Pasternack Expands Its Portfolio of
High-Power Amplifiers
IRVINE, Calif. — Pasternack, an Infinite Electronics brand and
a leading provider of RF, microwave and millimeter-wave
products, has broadened its line of high-power amplifiers
engineered for a wide array of market applications in VHF,
UHF, L, S, C, X and Ku bands.
This new series of high-power amplifiers provides saturated
output power levels ranging from 10 watts to 200 watts and
is designed with rugged, military-grade, coaxial packages
with an operational temperature range from -40 to +185
degrees Fahrenheit.
Pasternack’s high-power amplifiers cover broadband
frequencies ranging from 1.5 MHz to 18 GHz, and include
GaN and LDMOS semiconductor designs. GaN models exhibit
high efficiency in a smaller package, and their performance
benefits are the most desirable for broadband applications.
Highly efficient Class AB designs feature 50-ohm input
and output matched ports, built-in control and protection
circuits, and D-sub connectors for DC bias, command control
and monitoring functions.
“These broadband, high-power amplifiers are ideal for
test-and-measurement applications, as well as transmitting
RF signals for radar, military radio, and telecommunication
systems,” said Tim Galla, Senior Product Manager.
Pasternack’s new high-power amplifiers are in stock and
ready for immediate shipment with no minimum order
quantity. For inquiries, contact Pasternack at +1-949-261-
1920.
Pasternack’s new line of RF amplifiers supports numerous broadband
applications.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 57

New Products
DunAn Microstaq Offers Digital
Pressure Temperature Sensor to Measure
Subcooling for HVAC-R Applications
AUSTIN, Texas (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — DunAn Microstaq, Inc.
(DMQ), a MEMS technology company, now offers a Digital
Pressure Temperature Sensor (DPTS) to measure subcooling
for HVAC-Refrigeration applications. Samples will be
available for evaluation in March 2023.
The DPTS is a self-contained device that measures pressure,
temperature, and calculates subcooling based on refrigerant
type. It is compatible with all ASHRAE safety groups A1, A2,
and A2L refrigerants. The latest generation DPTS can read
maximum pressure between 500 to 700psi.
The DPTS is available as a superheat sensor as well. In a
HVAC-R system, two DPTS sensors can be used to measure
superheat and subcooling. Superheat measurements monitor
the efficiency of the HVAC-R system and can be used as a
safety sensor to protect the compressor from liquid flooding.
Subcooling measurements monitor the refrigerant charge
level and control the high-pressure flow control valve
to maintain the condenser mass flow rate for optimum
performance (DMQ Patent No. 10,648,719).
The end user communicates with DPTS devices via the RS485
communication bus using the MODBUS RTU communication
protocol. The DPTS is installed on a ¼" SAE 45° flare male
fitting for pressure measurements and a temperature sensor
from the DPTS wiring harness is installed at the exit of the
evaporator for superheat measurement or at the exit of the
condenser for subcooling measurement. The end user may
utilize both superheat and subcooling readings as input to
trigger a programmable output to electrical equipment such
as valves, actuators, or compressor contactors via solid-state
relays.
DunAn Microstaq’s Digital Pressure Temperature Sensor measures pressure
and temperature, calculates subcooling based on refrigerant type, and is
compatible with all ASHRAE safety groups A1, A2, and A2L refrigerants.
The DPTS superheat and subcooling sensors can be used
for monitoring efficient operation of the HVAC-R system,
predicting equipment failure, real-time refrigerant charge
monitoring for refrigerant leak detection over time, and
efficiently managing system refrigerant charge. DMQ’s
DPTS components are the future for real-time refrigerant
charge management/monitoring to protect both the natural
environment and HVAC-R systems.
For more information about DPTS, visit www.dmq-us.com/
product/digital-pressure-temperature-sensor-dpts/ or to get
in contact with DMQ.
58
| Chief Engineer

Thomson Introduces High-Precision
Miniature Lead Screws to Meet Demand
for Compact Application Designs
WOOD DALE, IL — Thomson Industries, Inc., a leading
manufacturer of linear motion control solutions, has
introduced a line of miniature lead screws and nuts. This new
offering extends the Thomson lead screw product line to
include 2-, 3- and 4-millimeter diameters.
“OEMs are increasingly demanding components for smaller
assemblies, and we are pleased to announce that Thomson
high-quality lead screws and nuts are now available in
diameters smaller than six millimeters,” said Saurabh
Khetan, Thomson Product Line Manager – Lead Screws. “This
provides our customers with additional flexibility to design
more compact systems and is part of the ongoing expansion
of our miniature offerings.”
The new Thomson miniature lead screw line is available
with either standard or anti-backlash lead nuts to optimize
positional accuracy, friction and repeatability. The antibacklash
lead nut design reduces friction between the nut
and screw threads in order to optimize efficiency while still
eliminating play between the lead screw and nut.
Customers can specify a variety of lead options and end
machining capabilities for maximum flexibility in final
assembly and precision at a miniature scale. As with all
Thomson products, a wide variety of customization options
are available. For ease of mounting and integration,
Thomson also offers oversized end machining options such
as journals and even a brand new, integrated coupler design,
which allows customers to easily mount the lead screw onto
various shaft diameters without the need of an additional
The new line of Thomson miniature lead screws is available in 2-, 3- and
4-millimeter diameters and with a handful of additional options to provide
flexible linear motion solutions for space-conscious applications.
coupling component.
The smaller screws are ideal for a wide range of applications
but are especially valuable in emerging medical technologies
and analytical equipment.
For more information on Thomson miniature lead screws,
visit https://www.thomsonlinear.com/en/products/lead-screws/
mini-lead-screws.
Building Controls &
Building Automation Systems
24-Hour Service Hotline
815.724.0525
www.ibs-chicago.com
info@ibs-chicago.com
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 59

New Products
Chicago Faucets’ Advanced E-Tronic 80
Faucets Engineered for Low Maintenance
The Chicago Faucet Company introduced a matte black finish
to the E-Tronic® 80 electronic touchless faucet and soap
dispenser family of commercial restroom fixtures. Building
owners, schools and facility managers appreciate the clean
look with above deck intelligent electronics that eliminate
clutter below the deck and enhance the overall design of
the room. They also like the innovative engineering and
solid construction that makes for intuitive, feature laden and
vandal resistant faucets and soap dispensers.
“More and more customers requested (or prefer) matte black
finish for commercial restrooms so we came out with the
E-Tronic 80 handsfree faucet and matching soap dispenser in
matte black,” says Greg Hunt, Chicago Faucets commercial
product manager. “Along with the original chrome finish,
E-Tronic 80 faucets provide options for specifiers. Amongst
the features, many are selecting ASSE 1070 compliant
thermostatic protection to help prevent scalding. Specifiers
also have the option for models with a hot water limiter and
multiple pre-set adjustments with the option of concealed or
user-controlled mixing. During these times of renewed focus
on infections, Chicago Faucets are not only top quality, but
are smart and especially created with safety for the user in
mind.”
Innovations engineered for the E-Tronic 80 Sensor Faucets
include a quick 15-minute
install time, above-deck electronics, water savings,
temperature adjustments and ADA compliance.
These benefits also make the E-Tronic 80 a popular choice for
commercial offices or public facilities.
• The E-Tronic faucets’ water run time can be easily adjusted
with the optional Commander handheld unit.
Chicago Faucets has introduced a matte black finish to its E-Tronic 80
touchless faucet and soap dispenser lines.
• Vandal resistant outlet options from 0.35 to 1.5 GPM.
• They are available with an integral ASSE 1070 compliant
thermostatic protection to help prevent scalding.
• Above-deck components and remote diagnostic
technology allow for easy remote selections and
maintenance in public or commercial restrooms.
• Five run-time modes and a hygiene flush with the optional
Commander handheld unit for the E-Tronic 80 allows
plumbing professional to adjust, monitor and select
options.
• A user temperature control handle with a hot and
cold indicator helps meet universal design and ADA
requirements. With user adjustable temperature control
plus 4˝ and 8˝ cover plates, the E-Tronic 80 meets any
application requirement.
• The faucets are also available with an optional Long Term
Power System, providing up to 15 years of maintenancefree
power. The faucet is also available as an AC plug-in,
hardwire, or DC with lithium CRP2 battery.
For additional information, to see the entire line of touchless
faucets contact The Chicago Faucet Company 800-566-2100
or visit chicagofaucets.com.
60
| Chief Engineer

FabricAir® Introduces the HE Suspension
System for Fabric HVAC Ducts in Harsh
Environments
FabricAir Inc, Duluth, Ga., the original manufacturer of
fabric HVAC duct, introduces the Harsh Environment (HE)
Suspension System. The HE Suspension System is the fabric
HVAC duct industry’s first and only hot dipped galvanized
(HDG) coating for safely protecting critical weight-bearing
suspension components from corrosion in commercial/
industrial building harsh environments.
The HE Suspension System is designed for use with FabricAir’s
proprietary anodized aluminum H-Rail suspension products
and consists of HDG threaded M8 steel rods, nuts, washers,
threaded rod couplings and rod/H-Rail connectors. The
specially designed, proprietary connectors accept M8 (5/16-
inch) rods, but adapt to the M6 (1/4-inch) diameters required
for standard H-Rail connection. The HDG coating’s minimum
40-micron layer is thicker and more protective than most
competitive coatings. Consequently, the male and female
threads of the rods and receptacles are cut strategically to
facilitate smooth turning.
The HE Suspension System complies with North American
building standards. The HE suspension system and H-Rail
are both designed to endure a minimum of 30 years in
a natatorium. Natatoriums are often classified under
corrosion categories of C4-C5, because they’re one of the
most challenging engineering environments due to inherent
high humidity, chloramines and gaseous pool sanitization
chemicals. Food processing, wastewater treatment, chemical
and other corrosive environment facilities and are also ideal
applications for the HE suspension system.
FabricAir recommends combining the HE Suspension
System with Combi permeable fabric duct for a total HE air
distribution system. Combi’s polyester material is corrosion
resistant, and its permeability prevents duct condensation
formation. Optional antimicrobial fabric treatment is also
available for food processing, pharmaceutical and other
applications where mold, mildew and other microbes
potentially grow. Combi is available with all FabricAir air
distribution vent designs.
The HE Suspension System’s other advantages include:
• Similar pricing to standard suspension systems.
• Applicable for 8 to 90-inch-diameter (203-mm to 2,286-
mm) fabric duct.
• Does not require routine maintenance.
• Meets all building codes.
• Contractors are responsible for hardware that connects the
suspension system to the structure.
• Simple and quick installation with conventional tools.
The HE Suspension System complements FabricAir’s current
galvanized and stainless-steel suspension system options.
Backed by the engineering and technical support
departments of FabricAir, which has been an international
leader in HVAC fabric duct manufacturing for all building
environments since 1973.
For more information on FabricAir products, visit
www.fabricair.com, email sales-US@fabricair.com or contact
customer and technical support departments at
(502) 493-2210.
HE Suspension System is the HVAC fabric duct industry’s first and only
solution to suspending fabric duct in natatoriums, food processing,
chemical plants and other corrosive environments.
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 61

Events
NADCA 34th Annual Meeting and
Exposition
March 27-29, 2023
Hilton Riverside
New Orleans, LA
MT. LAUREL, N.J. — The National Air Duct Cleaners
Association (NADCA) — also known as the HVAC Inspection,
Cleaning, and Restoration Association — has announced
that its 34th Annual Meeting & Exposition will take place
March 27-29, 2023, at the Hilton Riverside in New Orleans,
Louisiana.
The industry’s largest annual event will bring together a
diverse group of professionals involved in the inspection,
cleaning, and restoration of HVAC systems. With industryspecific
certifications, educational sessions, and networking,
the Annual Meeting is perfect for air systems cleaning
specialists, mold remediators, HVAC inspectors, or anyone
interested in the comprehensive field of HVAC system
cleaning. Attendees will gain insights into emerging
technologies, the latest trends, proven ways to build and
grow duct cleaning businesses, and best practices based on
current literature and evidence-based standards.
“This year’s program continues our focus on training and
education, with outstanding content for technicians and
business owners,” says Jodi Araujo, CEM, NADCA's Chief
Executive Officer. “It’s important that HVAC professionals
continue to learn and network with industry peers and learn
best practices from industry experts. Attendees from both
established air duct cleaning businesses and new companies
entering the industry will have access to incredible
educational sessions. No one offers better professional
development and networking opportunities than NADCA.”
• Educational session topics include:
• Healthy Buildings and Healthy People: The Importance of
Indoor Air Quality
• How to Grow Residential HVAC Cleaning Businesses
• Improving Work Quality and Production Efficiency
• Emerging Technologies
• Using CVI Certifications to Generate More Business
• Understanding Static Pressure
• Employee Hiring and Retention
“Attending the NADCA Annual Meeting and Exposition is
one of the most convenient ways for technicians to earn Air
Systems Cleaning Specialist (ASCS) or Certified Ventilation
Inspector (CVI) certifications,” Araujo continues. “We offer
the certification training courses and the opportunity to sit
for the certification exams during the event. Plus, several
of our educational sessions are eligible for continuing
education credits necessary for certification renewal.”
Technicians seeking the Air Systems Cleaning Specialist
62 | Chief Engineer
(ASCS) or Certified Ventilation Inspector (CVI) certification
will have the opportunity to participate in the preconference
training courses on Monday, March 27, with
exams for both certifications offered on Tuesday, March 28.
The conference will also feature educational sessions that
provide attendees with the opportunity to gain continuing
education credits (CECs) necessary for certification renewals.
In addition, the event will feature the always-popular exhibit
hall, providing attendees with an up-close-and-personal view
of new and innovative technology, equipment and services
available for the HVAC cleaning industry.
NADCA’s 2023 Annual Meeting and Exposition is scheduled
for March 27-29. To register or learn more about the event,
including a detailed program agenda, visit
https://annualmeeting.nadca.com.
2023 National HVACR Education Conference
March 20-22, 2023
South Point Hotel
Las Vegas, NV
Whether you are looking to build your brand, introduce
new technologies, or want to improve education in the
HVACR industry, the National HVACR Education Conference
is a must-attend event. Come for a unique opportunity to
interact with those on the front line of HVACR education.
You could travel the country to meet instructors who can
incorporate your resources into their classrooms, or you
could take part in this year’s National HVACR Education
Conference.
What Draws Attendees to This Face-to-Face Event?
While people attend this event for many different reasons,
key feedback says the number one reason is to gain
information that guides the decision-making processes
that keep programs current and relevant in several areas.
Instructors attend to learn about:
• Equipment, components and controls that they can
incorporate into their programs. They want to interact
with components, and see live demonstrations at exhibits.
• Refrigerants, the safe handling of new refrigerants as well
as the proper steps to charge, top-off, or retrofit a system.
• Chemicals that they should be using in their classes. They
want to learn about new products, how they are used, as
well as any important safety-related issues that must be
addressed.

• Tools and test instruments that they can interact with.
They look to try new tools, or to participate in product
demonstrations that help them understand the features
and benefits of each tool and test instrument.
• Curriculum and training services that cover the courses they
offer. They want to stay ahead of the curve and want the
resources to help students improve comprehension, while
covering all of the competencies in their program.
Think Outside the Booth
Attendees come seeking the unexpected! They are hoping to
visit product learning centers where the resources you offer
come to life. If instructors are having fun in the exhibit hall,
they will spend more time with you. So be prepared to help
them see, feel, touch, and interact with the components,
demonstrations, cutaways, presentations, and other
educational tools that help bring technology to life in fun,
exciting, and memorable ways.
For additional information, call (800) 394-5268, or visit
escogroup.org and click the conference link to sign up.
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Certified WBE, WOSB
www.eip-hvac.com
Volume 88 · Number 2 | 63

Ashrae Update
ASHRAE Commits to Developing an
IAQ Pathogen Mitigation Standard
ATLANTA — ASHRAE’s board of directors recently announced
its commitment to support the expedited development of
a national indoor air quality (IAQ) pathogen mitigation
standard. The goal is to finalize the consensus-based, codeenforceable
standard within six months.
“The health and well-being of building occupants are
crucial factors that must be considered during the design,
construction and operation phases of the building process,”
said 2022-23 ASHRAE President Farooq Mehboob, Fellow
Life Member ASHRAE. “ASHRAE’s long history of leadership
in IAQ science and technology, will provide broad-reaching
guidance through this standard to help ensure the use of
best practices for pathogen mitigation, which will assist in
creating safer indoor spaces for us all.”
ASHRAE will set up a balanced team of internationally
recognized experts to work on an accelerated timeline to
develop the standard. Delivery of the standard will include:
• Both design and operation
• Alternative paths (prescriptive or performance), in which
equivalent clean air would be the goal
• Testing, verification, documentation (commissioning) and
periodic re-commissioning
The increased focus on IAQ by governments and the public,
along with the convergence of the flu, respiratory syncytial
(RSV) and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) threatening public health,
makes ASHRAE’s development of the pathogen mitigation
standard of even greater importance, as jurisdictions and
building owners look to a reputable and non-biased source
for guidance and science-based building standards.
Airborne transmission of pathogens is of concern to the
public writ-large and governments are responding. In March,
the U.S. government launched the National COVID-19
Preparedness Plan, which included recommendations to
improve ventilation and filtration in buildings. The Clean Air
in Buildings Challenge was also launched this spring, along
with a Summit on Improving Indoor Air Quality in October.
The ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force responded to the COVID-19
pandemic with the release of extensive guidance, including
IAQ resources, referenced by governments, building owners,
and facility managers in the U.S. and internationally.
Call for Speakers Announced for ASHRAE Developing
Economies Conference
ATLANTA — ASHRAE announced a call for healthcare and
residential tracks speakers for the Developing Economies
Conference 2023, May 11-12, 2023 in Mumbai, India. This is
ASHRAE’s third Developing Economies Conference.
64 | Chief Engineer
The conference theme is “Decarbonizing and Sustaining
Growth of Healthcare and Residential Infrastructure in
Emerging and Future Markets.”
With a focus on healthcare and residential, the conference
will cover resiliency, indoor environmental quality (IEQ),
building decarbonization, policy making and digitalization
and other topics. Technical sessions will also address the
challenges of rapidly growing energy and sustainability, and
the role to be played by the global HVAC&R industry to meet
the building decarbonization targets set during the 2021
United Nations Climate Change Conference.
“Post-COVID, the importance of quality healthcare and
the need for carbon footprint reduction have been crucial
issues, which is why they will be the focus area for the 2023
conference. The last two editions of the conference have
demonstrated the benefit of this event, as it offers a twoway
learning for both developed and emerging economies
and provides an opportunity to the global HVAC&R
community to come together to network, learn and evolve
their offerings in making the world a better place,” said
Ashish Rakheja, conference chair.
Presentation proposals to speak are requested on the
following program tracks:
Healthcare
• Decarbonizing healthcare sector
• Resiliency in healthcare buildings / infrastructure
• Working with nature in designing hospitals
• IEQ in healthcare
• Policies, standards, codes and certifications
• Role of digitalization in healthcare
Residential
• Decarbonizing residential ecosystem: engineering towards
net zero
• Retrofitting to a sustainable future
• New-age products and technologies
• Heating and cooling technologies
• Smart homes
• Policies, standards, codes and certifications
• Future proofing our homes (climate change)
Presentation abstracts (300 words or less) are due Jan. 15,
2023, and notifications will be sent by Feb. 28, 2023. If
accepted, final presentation submissions are due April 30,
2023.
For more information or to submit a presentation proposal,
visit ashrae.org/DevelopingEcon2023.

Fluid Technologies, Inc.
925 Tollgate Rd.
Elgin, IL 60123
Ph 847-488-9588
Fax 847-488-9688
andy@ftipumpsandcontrols.com
Volume 87 · Number 11 | 65

American Street Guide
In Tornado-Ravaged Selma, Prayers of
Thanks By Kim Chandler | Associated Press
SELMA, Ala. (AP) — Leading Sunday services on the lawn
outside his tornado-damaged Crosspoint Christian Church,
the Rev. David Nichols told his congregation there was much
for which to be grateful despite the destruction around
them.
The tornado that ravaged Selma hit the church’s daycare.
It destroyed much of the building, collapsing walls and
leaving piles of rubble in some of the classrooms, but the 70
children and teachers who huddled inside bathrooms were
unharmed.
“Nothing but by the grace of God that they walked out of
there,” Nichols said as he looked at the building.
The Sunday after a tornado devastated much of the historic
city of Selma, church congregations raised up prayers of
gratitude for lives spared and gave prayers of comfort for
lives lost elsewhere to the storm.
Churches anchor the community for many in this historic city.
Black congregations also played an integral role in the civil
rights movement. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose
birthday was celebrated the Monday after the disaster,
led the 1965 voting rights march from Brown Chapel AME
Church.
The storm system was blamed with killing nine people — two
in Georgia and seven in rural Autauga County, Ala., where
an estimated EF3 tornado, which is just two steps below the
most powerful category of twister, tossed mobile homes
into the air and ripped away roofs. The Selma twister, an
estimated high-end EF2 with winds of 130 mph, cut a wide
swath through the city, collapsing buildings and snapping
trees in half. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said Sunday, Jan. 15,
that President Joe Biden had approved a major disaster
declaration for the two hard-hit Alabama counties.
The hymn “Amazing Grace” floated across the lawn at
Selma’s Crosspoint Church, where services were held outside
because of the damage to the main sanctuary. The service
also honored the quick-thinking teachers who got the
children, ranging in age from infants to 5-year-olds, to the
building’s inner bathrooms and shielded them with their
own bodies as the twister roared over them.
Sheila Stockman, a teacher at Crosspoint Christian daycare,
said they made the decision to get the children to the
bathroom when they saw the storm was headed for them.
“The walls started shaking and I told my class, ‘Lie down and
close your eyes’ .... and I laid down on top of them until it
was over,” Stockman said.
Stockman said the teachers tried to reassure the children as
the tornado roared above.
“I was praying, and I kept telling them, ‘It’s OK. I got you.
You’re OK. I love y’all,’” Shana Lathan told her class as they
huddled inside the bathroom.
When it was over, Stockman said they opened the bathroom
door to see the sky above them and parts of the building
gone. A room that held the preschoolers moments earlier
was filled with rubble.
At historic Brown Chapel AME, congregation members
handed out plates of food, baby formula, diapers, water and
other supplies Sunday afternoon.
“There are so many people hurting here right now that there
is sort of like a mutual misery, which requires a shared hope
and a shared vision to help us to help each other through
this,” the Rev. Leodis Strong said.
His sermon for the day was titled “A Storm-Tested Faith.”
Strong said the community’s faith is being tested because
“this is an environment that we have to rely upon that
relationship with God and put into practice the faith that we
have developed.”
A bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sits outside the
church. As the nation marks King’s birthday, Strong said
King’s message resonates through the disaster recovery.
“If anything, that ought to inspire and motivate us to
practice our faith and our understanding of Dr. King’s
commitment,” Strong said. “So we’ll make it through this.
We’re going to make it.”
At Blue Jean Selma Church, a racially diverse church with a
name meant to convey that all are welcome in any attire
they choose, there was a similar message. “Even in the midst
of this we have hope,” Bob Armstrong, the church pastor,
said.
Church members shared stories of close calls — one man
emerging unscathed from a demolished building and
another who moved from a building shortly before the
ceiling collapsed.
Congregation member Lynn Reeves, who swayed to the
modern gospel music beneath the church’s stained-glass
windows, had a similar feeling of gratitude. With the
destruction through the city, it’s amazing no one was killed,
she said.
66
| Chief Engineer

Debris is spread wide on County Road 43 in the aftermath from severe weather, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023, in Prattville, Ala. A giant, swirling storm system
billowing across the South spurred a tornado on Thursday that shredded the walls of homes, toppled roofs and uprooted trees in Selma, Ala., a city etched
in the history of the civil rights movement. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)
During the storm, Reeves sheltered in the bathroom of the
auto parts store where she works. She said her coworker was
in the store’s delivery truck when the twister dropped part of
a roof on top of him, but he was not seriously hurt.
“It’s a blessing. By the grace of God, it’s a blessing, because it
could have been worse,” Reeves said.
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Volume 88 · Number 2 | 67

ACROSS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 80 Marry letters
81 46 Executive Visionary director
17 18 19 20 21
1 Pinch
82 47 Talky Outer layer of skin
48 Female biological
6 Abdominal
22 23 24
83 Vote in
change
muscles (abbr.)
84 Compass
50 Equal point
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
9 MGM’s Lion
86 52 VI The San Francisco
12 Small bunch of 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
88 Austin treat (2wds) novel
flowers
90 53 Seafood ________ exercise
40 41 42 43 44 45 46
17 Race car
92 54 Beers Hoopla
56 Ship initials
18 Vocal only
100 Air Cushion Vehicle
47 48 49 50 51 52 53
57 Dual
21 Coral reef
59 (abbr.) Cleaning up
22 Type of acid
54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62
101 60 Query American Cancer
23 Dome of the Rock
102 That Society girl (abbr.)
63 64 65 66 67 68
locale
103 62 Male Central cat nervous
24 Craze
69 70 71 72 73 74 75
104 Meet system
65 Oil change company
25 Desert
106 Revolutions per
76 77 78 79
66 Recently
26 Legume
70 minute Type of music
28 Clip
80 81 82 83 84 85 86 108 72 Genetic Queasy code
29 Poem of praise
31 Father
87 88 89 90 91 92 93
111 74 Spots Extremely high
112 Present frequency (abbr.)
32 Land worker
94 95 96 97 98
113 75 Prize Hit
80 Marry
34 Factual
114 Unsuitable
99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106
81 Executive director
37 Rice wine
116 82 Part Talky
39 Style
107 108 109 110 111
118 83 Lawyer Vote in (abbr.)
40 Snake
42 Apprehend
112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122
120 84 Amend Compass point
121 86 Tiny VI amounts
44 Pole
123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130
122 88 Deer-like Austin novel animal
90 Seafood
45 Telegraphic signal
124 Scoff
92 Beers
131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139
47 Ruler
125 100 After Air Cushion awhile Vehicle
49 Pompous
140 141 142
126 Some (abbr.)
51 Jewish scribe
127 101 Catch Query
54 Imitate
143 144 145 146
129 102 Small That girl ground plot
103 Male cat
55 However
132 Ball holder
www.CrosswordWeaver.com
104 Meet
58 Cocktail drink
134 Scriptural your
106 Revolutions per
59 Sticky black ACROSS 96 “Raven” 55 author However DOWN 99 Sew together 39 3 Megacycles Colder per 135 Wrath minute
substance
97 Stiffen58 Cocktail drink
101 Features
4 second Women's partners 136 108 Hand Genetic tool code
61 Business abbr. 1 Pinch 98 Nichts 59 Sticky black 1 Dice 105 Little game Mermaid's love 41 5 Globes Type of plane 137 111 No Spots
63 Uproar 6 Abdominal muscles
substance
107 Villain
6 Genius
112 Present
99 Sew together
2 Synthetic fabric 43 Phony
139 Lode yield
(abbr.)
61 Business abbr.
109 Mousy
7 Saloon
113 Prize
64 South southwest
9 MGM's Lion 101 Features
63 Uproar
3 Colder
110 Digit
44 Ancient
8 Reeled
German 114 Unsuitable
65 Royal family
12 Small bunch of 105 Little Mermaid’s 64 South southwest love 4 Women’s 111 Viper partners 9 letters Spring
116 Part
67 Arctic flowers 107 Villain65 Royal family 5 Type 112 Tel of __ plane (Israel's 4610 Visionary Annex
118 Lawyer (abbr.)
68 May 17 Race car 109 Mousy67 Arctic
6 Genius capital)
4711 Outer Roberto's layer yes of skin 120 Amend
69 Scent 18 Vocal only 110 Digit 68 May
7 Saloon 115 Cook
4812 Female Similar biological 121 Tiny amounts
71 Gets dirty 21 Coral reef
69 Scent
117 Alcoholic beverage 13 School group
122 Deer-like animal
111 Viper
8 Reeled
change
22 Type of acid
71 Gets dirty
119 Injure
14 Musical composition 124 Scoff
73 Nuts
23 Dome of the Rock 112 Tel __ (Israel’s 73 Nuts
9 Spring 123 Colorless
5015 Equal Book by Homer 125 After awhile
75 Honey makerslocale
capital) 75 Honey makers 10 Annex 124 January (abbr.) 5216 The Forest San clearing Francisco 126 Some
76 Government 24 Craze 115 Cook 76 Government agency 11 Roberto’s 125 Behind yes
18 treat Open (2wds)
127 Catch
agency 25 Desert 117 Alcoholic 77 Respiratory beveragedisease
12 Similar 128 Teaspoon (abbr.) 5319 ________ Pounds per exercise square 129 Small ground plot
77 Respiratory 26 Legume 119 Injure 78 Reporter's question 13 School 130 W.C. group
54 Hoopla inch
132 Ball holder
disease 28 Clip
79 Rowing tool
131 Having wings
20 Berserk
134 Scriptural your
123 Colorless
14 Musical composition 56 Ship initials
29 Poem of praise
80 Cover a present 133 Travel on a circuit 27 Terminal abbr.
135 Wrath
78 Reporter’s
31 Father 124 January 81 (abbr.) Cheddar-like cheese 15 Book 138 Gambling by Homer game 5730 Dual Does
136 Hand tool
question 32 Land worker 125 Behind83 Mischievous 16 Forest 140 Indian clearing monetary unit 5933 Cleaning Federal Bureau up of 137 No
79 Rowing tool 34 Factual 128 Teaspoon 85 Aces (abbr.) 18 Open 141 Chuck (2 wds.) 60 American Investigation Cancer 139 Lode yield
80 Cover a present 37 Rice wine 130 W.C. 87 Flightless bird 19 Pounds 142 Regions per square 35 Society Card game (abbr.)
81 Cheddar-like 39 Style 131 Having 88 wings Snake like fish inch 143 Restrain
6236 Central Hearing nervous part
cheese 40 Snake
89 Infant
144 Shekel
37 Boy
133 Travel on a circuit 20 Berserk
system
42 Apprehend
91 BB association
145 Wooden sheet
38 Attention-Deficit
83 Mischievous
44 Pole 138 Gambling 93 Kimono gamesash
27 Terminal 146 Brief abbr. 65 Oil Disorder change (abbr.) company
85 Aces 45 Telegraphic signal 140 Indian 94 monetary Insult
30 Does
6639 Recently Megacycles per
87 Flightless bird 47 Ruler
unit 95 Modern
33 Federal DOWN Bureau of 70 Type second of music
88 Snake like fish 49 Pompous 141 Chuck 96 (2 wds.) "Raven" author Investigation
7241 Queasy Globes
89 Infant 51 Jewish scribe
142 Regions 97 Stiffen
35 Card 1 Dice
game
game
7443 Extremely Phony high
91 BB association 54 Imitate
98 Nichts
2 Synthetic fabric
44 Ancient German
143 Restrain
36 Hearing part
frequency (abbr.)
93 Kimono sash
144 Shekel
37 Boy
75 Hit
94 Insult
145 Wooden sheet
38 Attention-Deficit
95 Modern
146 Brief
Disorder (abbr.)
68
| Chief Engineer

Boiler Room Annex
The Best-Laid Plans …
Source: engineering-humour.com/engineering-jokes.html
A scientist and an engineer were sharing a prison cell, both
sentenced to be shot at dawn. Fortunately, they came up
with a plan. As the physicist was led out to the firing squad,
the engineer set fire to a small pile of straw on the windowledge
of their cell.
"Look!" the physicist yelled to his captors. "The prison is
burning!" The firing squad dropped their weapons and
ran to put out the conflagration. Furthermore, the Warden
decided that the scientist deserved a pardon for saving the
prison.
The next day the firing squad came for the engineer. The
scientist was having a much harder time getting a large
enough fire going outside the prison to draw attention. As it
happens, it wasn't until the engineer was staring down the
rifle barrels that he finally saw enough smoke. So, as fast as
he could, the engineer yelled, "Fire!"
Questions & Answers
Source: http://hutnyak.com/Jokes.htm
Q: What is the definition of an engineer?
A: Someone who solves a problem you didn’t know you had
in a way you don’t understand.
Q: When does a person decide to become an engineer?
A: When he realizes he doesn’t have the charisma to be an
undertaker.
Q: How can you tell an extroverted engineer?
A: When he talks to you, he looks at your shoes instead of his
own.
Q: Why did the engineers cross the road?
A: Because they looked in the file and that’s what they did
last year.
Q: How do you drive an engineer completely insane?
Solution:
C Y A N S W B W S E B S A L A S
H O P I C I A O T U L I P E V E R Y
A U R A A N N E A L I B I R I V E N
P R I G M C G G L E N C A R D I A C
S L A B H U R L E R G N U S
R E V I O U T R I G O A R S
S L A V I C B T U W A C R A V E L
C P U Y O W L S N O B A I K I D O
U R S A L A I R D I S T R Y S S T
T I T L E M I L A N O K A Y
E G Y P T M A G I T Y P E D O S E S
S H O T N I H I L H U L L O
A S H A C V A G O N O P E R A I D
F L A U N T B L O W T R A M P T A
R O U T E T O P A C E O T I O S E
O G L E T A C O H A S S R I
B A L K C L U T C H E L A N
O B T R U D E S L A M E A R S C A B
A L I A S N I T E R A N T I K U D U
T U N I S T W E A K L I E D I R I S
H E E L O W N S A C R E N A R Y
JANUARY SOLUTION
A: Tie him to a chair, stand in front of him, and fold up a
road map the wrong way.
Engineering Wisdom
Source: www.reddit.com
• Normal people believe that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
Engineers believe that if it isn’t broken, it doesn’t have
enough features yet.
• Architects are generalists to some extent, and know a
little about a lot of things, and learn less and less about
more and more until eventually they know nothing
about everything. Engineers on the other hand, tend to
specialize, they learn more and more about less and less
until they end up knowing everything about nothing.
Volume 87 · Number 12 | 69

Dependable Sources
ACR Restoration & Construction Services 67
Preservation Services 20
Addison Electric Motors & Drives 63
Advanced Boiler Control Services 29
Air Comfort Corporation 51
Rotating Equipment Specialists 13
Second Nature 58
Sprinkler Fitters Local 281 Inside Front Cover, 4
Air Filter Engineers
Back Cover
United Radio Communications, Inc. 24
Airways Systems 57
American Combustion Service Inc. 45
AMS Mechanical Systems, Inc. 47
Bear Construction 43
Beverly Companies 35
Bornquist, Inc. 31
Chicago Backflow 25
Chicago Corrosion Group 67
City Wide Pool & Spa 19
Competitive Piping Systems 60
Critical Environments Professionals, Inc. 61
Door Service, Inc. 54
Dreisilker Electric Motors 29
Energy Improvement Products, Inc. 63
Evergreen Electric Supply 59
F.E. Moran Fire Protection 49
Fluid Technologies, Inc. 65
Global Water Technology, Inc. 44
Hard Rock Concrete Cutters 33
Hayes Mechanical 21
Heatmasters Mechanical 57
Hudson Boiler & Tank Co. 56
Imbert International 55
Interactive Building Solutions 59
Kroeschell, Inc. 32
MVB Services, Inc. 35
70
| Chief Engineer

CALL FOR APPLICANTS:
THE
ERNEST K. AND
LOIS R. WULFF
SCHOLARSHIP
THE ERNEST K. AND LOIS R. WULFF SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM,
ADMINISTERED BY THE CHIEF ENGINEERS ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGOLAND
(CEAC), AIMS TO ASSIST WORTHY STUDENTS IN PURSUIT OF THEIR
STUDIES.
IF YOU KNOW OF A STUDENT — IN ANY FIELD OF STUDY — WHOSE HARD
WORK COULD BENEFIT FROM THE SUPPORT OF THE CEAC, CONTACT US AT
INFO@CHIEFENGINEER.ORG FOR AN APPLICATION FORM AND MORE
INFORMATION, AND VISIT HTTPS://CHIEFENGINEER.ORG/SCHOLARSHIP/.
ALL APPLICATION MATERIALS ARE DUE BY JULY 1ST, 2021.
WE LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU!
AWARDS ARE GIVEN THROUGH THE CHIEF ENGINEERS ASSOCIATION SCHOLARSHIP FUND COMMITTEE. THE POTENTIAL SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT WILL BE REQUIRED
TO SUBMIT AN APPLICATION, INCLUDING ACADEMIC RECORDS, NATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT TEST SCORES, LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION FROM A COMMUNITY LEADER,
PRINCIPAL OR COUNSELOR, AND A WRITTEN ESSAY ON THE FIELD OF EDUCATION THAT THE POTENTIAL SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT WISHES TO PURSUE. THE CHIEF
ENGINEERS ASSOCIATION SCHOLARSHIP COMMITTEE WILL EVALUATE ALL COMPLETED APPLICATIONS AND SELECT A MAXIMUM OF TWO (2) FOR THE SCHOLARSHIP
AWARD.

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