Sustainable Use of Water

Daniel Harris
Sunday, April 26th - 9:06pm EST

When it comes to water management, college campuses take the initiative of making sure it's being used efficiently; not misused. Duke University has taken their water management to new levels and has worked hard to reduce the amount of water misused on their campus by over 28% since 2006. This percentage includes the addition of new buildings on campus. They have repaired and replaced the outdated plumbing hardware that was not conserving the appropriate amount of water over the years. They fixed leaks and dripping faucets across campus after auditing the top fifty water-using buildings on grounds. The university was struggling with conserving the storm waters, and reclaimed waters on campus until they implemented the installation of larger tanks – now holding up to 10,000 gallons. The university newly constructed chilled water plants, as well as renovated existing buildings to make sure they had the best-available water efficient plumbing hardware.

Duke used new technology like cyclical process water cooling, which is used in pressurizing the water for vapor compression, where the water is heated, then cooled in a cooling tower for water recovery, then run through a condensing economizer that produces steam per fuel. Of course, all of these things are measured by water meters that are installed throughout campus grounds. The university also constructed a 10-acre water reclamation pond that will collect all storm water runoff for reuse through their new technology-based cooling system. This process that the University has put into place to better sustain their use and distribution of water amongst campus will now save them "approximately 100 million gallons of potable water each year." ("Water Management: Duke")