Students tackle water challenges in Wetskills competition
Hunched over tables and pitching to CEOs, an international group of students tackled five different challenges in water technology while bridging interdisciplinary and intercultural divides.
For the past two weeks, three University of Wisconsin students joined their Canadian and Dutch counterparts at the international water technology competition Wetskills. They came to Milwaukee to develop solutions to challenges in water technology and business, working closely with local and global companies to gain experiences they could not find in their schools alone.
Milwaukee is the first American city to host Wetskills, which has taken place in 12 countries around the world. The Dutch organizers selected Milwaukee on the strength of its water technology research and industries, represented by The Water Council, which helped host the competition.
UW-Milwaukee graduate student Katie Hall was assigned to team Cadens, along with Greg Giberson from Toronto and Evelien Brand and Tijmen Groot of the Netherlands.
Cadens LLC, a start-up company operating out of the Global Water Center, is trying to bring small-scale hydropower to unconventional sites with custom-designed and 3D-printed turbines. The small company is still developing its product, and recruited the students to improve their system before it is tested and marketed around the country.
Their challenge: Make it smart; make it automatic.
Once the turbine is installed in a dam, the amount of water flowing through has to balance the water level in the rivers and ponds upstream with the energy needs at the old mill that serves as Cadens’ test site in Jefferson County. Unlike larger dams, small sites have to quickly respond to natural fluctuations.
“We only use what’s coming downstream,” Joe Millevolte, technical director at Cadens, told Hall and her teammates on day one of the challenge as they worked in the lobby of the Global Water Center.
While he focused on designing efficient turbines, Millevolte needed Hall’s team to design a system to decide how much water to let through the dam at each moment.
After brainstorming and researching for four days, the Cadens team was the third to stand up in front of business leaders and water engineers at the center for feedback ahead of their final presentations.
Giberson read from notes as he touted the efficiencies of automated, small-scale hydropower and the hundreds of thousands of sites that could generate their own electricity but currently lie fallow.
Responding to a barrage of questions on technical and economic feasibility, Hall jumped in from the sidelines to help her teammate.
“In certain areas you can’t put a windmill, but you could put a (water) turbine,” she said, pointing out that their product fills in gaps left by other renewable energy technologies.
At the eighth annual Water Summit held at the Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, the teams drew lots to decide when they would give their final pitch — Cadens was called first. The jury included representatives of UW-Whitewater, water technology companies and the Dutch government.
The team introduced themselves and Giberson launched into a more-polished version of his team’s pitch for smart hydropower.
During the poster session that followed, Hall said the competition had helped form a “very concrete bridge between academia and enterprise” by encouraging students to address real problems facing the companies.
Hall’s studies in sustainable peacebuilding are focused on connecting resources, people and institutions that are less effective apart than they could be together. After participating in Wetskills, she sees the same opportunities for Milwaukee’s water sector.
“So my thought is: Why aren’t the clusters talking together?” she asked, referring to nonprofits, technology companies, businesses and government offices focused on water in the region.
On Wednesday, Gov. Scott Walker helped congratulate the graduating class of the BREW start-up accelerator program, which included Cadens, before the Wetskills winner was announced.
Dutch company BersonUV and their team, which included Matthew Boelter of UW-Whitewater, won first place for their system to offer high-tech disinfection options to water purifiers.
Winning never mattered much to Cadens’ Millevolte, who said working with the Wetskills organizers and Hall’s team was fruitful and energizing.
“Their energy level was so high that it actually motivated me to kick my enthusiasm for my own product up a bit — quite a bit!” he said.
SOURCE: