Project Milestones

Fall 2022 – Creating a Circular Economy between Indoor Vertical Farming and Food Waste  

Project Directors: Yujin Park and Zhihao Chen

The team investigated the effect of crude food waste fertilizer ozone treatment duration on observed nitrate (NO₃) concentration and found that NO₃ concentration increased linearly as shown in the figure for typical conditions. This critical result indicates that ozone treatment will indeed make such treated food waste fertilizer substantially more efficient for plant nitrogen uptake than untreated food waste, confirming the original foundational hypothesis for the project.

Fall 2022 – Textile Engineering of Polyethylene Recycling for Future Vehicles

Project Director: Kenan Song

Assembly of the lab-scale fiber spinning apparatus, startup and qualification of the unit, optimization of fiber composition, and fiber property testing standardization were successfully completed in the first few months of the project.   Initial process runs demonstrated that optimized fibers exhibit properties measurably superior to conventional commercial carbon fibers.  A new patent disclosure will be filed based on these promising results.

Summer 2022 –  A data-driven approach for water safety plans in sustainable buildings to predict and prevent disease 

Project Director: Hamilton

The team conducted a comprehensive field study to target the source of Legionella contamination in a green building.  This work uncovered the water softener and an expansion tank as an understudied source of contamination.   The study will be detailed in a publication in Frontiers in Water to appear in early 2023.

In addition to Legionella sampling, the project team collected sensor and other water quality data.  Machine learning (ML) algorithms are being developed to predict chlorine residual; the goal is that such predictions could inform facilities management software tools. Initial results are encouraging. The figure below shows reasonably good ML model predictions for chlorine residual over a 24 hour period.

Fall 2021 – Storytelling Robots for Older Adults Living with Dementia and Their Caregivers

Project Director Troy McDaniel

Our story-telling robots project originally aimed at assisting caregivers for Alzheimer’s sufferers has broadened to dealing with seniors’ loneliness and isolation in the era of COVID.   In this expansion of scope and scale, a new partnership with Mirabella Independent Living has been established.  Initial studies with Mirabella residents revealed encouraging results: people open up with the robot and undertake deep levels of conversation; interactions are described as meaningful and fun; some perceive facial expression in the robots; some consider the robot to be a friend.

August 2021 – Storytelling Robots for Older Adults Living with Dementia and Their Caregivers

Project Director Troy McDaniel

The newly-published book entitled Multimedia for Accessible Human Computer Interfaces, edited by Troy McDaniel and Xueliang Liu (ISBN-10: 3030707156), is a comprehensive tour of human-assistive technologies.  This major work is the first resource to provide in-depth coverage on topical areas of multimedia computing (images, video, audio, speech, haptics, VR/AR, etc.) for accessible and inclusive human computer interfaces. Topics are grouped into thematic areas spanning the human senses: Vision, Hearing, Touch, as well as Multimodal applications. Each chapter is written by different multimedia researcher experts to provide complementary and multidisciplinary perspectives. Unlike other related books, which focus on guidelines for designing accessible interfaces, or are dated in their coverage of cutting-edge multimedia technologies, Multimedia for Accessible Human Computer Interfaces takes an application-oriented approach to present a tour of how the field of multimedia is advancing access to human computer interfaces for individuals with disabilities.

Summer 2021 – Passive Radiative Heat Pump Surfaces for Urban Cooling: From Laboratory to Field Testing

Project Director David Sailor      

In this partnership with the City of Tempe and 3M, the Zimin-Institute-funded team installed 3M-supplied radiative cooling thin films on the rooftops of transit stops for a bus route in Tempe and found their thermal performance to be quite promising.  The films exhibit high solar reflectance of ~94% (vs. 45% typical surface) and a high thermal emittance of ~93% (vs.  70% typical), such that surfaces on which they are installed can remain substantially below the urban ambient temperature.  Comprehensive studies over a range of summer days and times-of-day cool revealed that the film surface is 0.63 °C (1.1 °F) cooler than ambient air, while conventional surfaces are 3.6 °C (6.4 °F) hotter than ambient air.  Bus riders under the cool film shelter experience mean radiant temperatures (MRT) that are ~ 1-2 °C (~2-4 °F) cooler than under control shelters without the films.  Based on these positive outcomes, the City of Tempe is considering incorporation of cooling films in future bus shelter design, bus roofs and other shade infrastructure.  In addition, the results are being shared with other cities on the Phoenix metropolitan area to assess their interest.

Spring 2021 – Treated Waste Plastics: Enhancing the Performance of Concrete

Project Director Christian Hoover   

This Zimin Institute project focused on repurposing waste plastic generated within a city and subjecting to a treatment process to enable its use in cement being used to build the city (thereby enabling a circular re-use while substantially reducing carbon footprint).  This process, for which the team has submitted a patent application, has demonstrated that a beam made by replacing a small percent of the cement with treated plastics can cause a dramatic increase in the ability of the cement to absorb energy, making it more ductile and durable while preserving most of its strength, when compared to a reference made of pure cement. At the limit, by using their unique plastic chemical pre-treatment process, the team realized an unprecedented increase of a factor of 7 in energy absorption for a 16 wt% plastic incorporation level.  The new formulation in addition reduces the concrete’s CO2 footprint. These dramatic findings are serving as the basis for discussions with potential investors and for major proposal submissions to federal agencies.