A NIAC team of five students and two staff members did just that Friday at Hastings Utilities’ Pollution Control Facility. After several hours of work, NIAC group members presented their findings Friday afternoon to a handful of employees including Manager Kevin Johnson, Director of Operations Lee Vrooman, PCF Superintendent Jim Heyen and PCF Lead Plant Mechanic Shane Peterson.

Heyen and Peterson said the assessment report was well received

“To reduce energy is a big thing,” Heyen said. “Even though it’s an internal cost it’s a big thing to all of us.”

The assessment report — given after the NIAC team toured the plant, worked on data collection and crunched numbers — included downsizing the PCF’s aeration blower, which aids ammonia removal. It also including switching out all of the current exit signs with more efficient LED exit signs.

Heyen said making the proposed changes could have advantageous effect on rate payers’ utility bills.

“I think the same way,” Peterson said. “We want to run as efficiently as we can. When you’re going through there day by day, sometimes you don’t always see those things. So it’s great to have an outside set of eyes take a look. If we can save money that saves everybody money.”

NIAC provides a no-cost energy, productivity, and waste assessment for small- and medium-sized manufacturers and municipal utilities. Manufacturers with gross annual sales below $100 million, fewer than 500 employees, and annual energy bills between $100,000 and $2.5 million are eligible to participate.

A team headed by three Nebraska engineering faculty was awarded a U.S. Department of Energy grant in January of more than $1.4 million to help small manufacturers use energy more efficiently and train engineering students in energy management and manufacturing processes. UNL joins 28 higher-education institutions from 25 states that operate IACs.

A NIAC team also conducted an assessment this summer at the Thermo King plant in Hastings. Janet Rosenbaum, with Thermo King in Hastings, said the plant has already begun implementing suggestions from NIAC.

NIAC Co-Director Bruce Dvorak, a UNL professor of civil engineering, was on site for the PCF assessment.

The on-site assessment examines all major energy using processes, ranging from boilers, cooling towers, motors, process equipment, and lighting. In 2016, IACs performed over 450 assessments that led to average annual savings of $120,000.

As of this month, the Nebraska Industrial Assessment Center has assessed 18 clients in Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri.

Locally and regionally, the NIAC is positioned to have a big impact, since the nearest IACs are in Utah to the west, Illinois to the east and Texas to the south.

It was Dvorak who had contacted Vrooman about conducting an NIAC assessment at Hastings Utilities. Dvorak was one of Vrooman’s professors in college.

“The waste water plant fit their description of what they wanted to look at,” Vrooman said.

There are 14 students — UNL juniors and seniors majoring in of several engineering disciplines — participating in the NIAC.

Working in the NIAC provides students with a wide range of experiences.

“Many employers are looking for students who have had a bit of open-ended problem solving experiences like this,” Dvorak said. “Employers often like students with experiences in a number of different types of facilities, learned a lot of the language.”

NIAC assessments, Dvorak said, provide real-world challenges as well as experiences gathering data and putting together practical solutions.

Brandon Schurman, a senior mechanical engineering major, was part of the NIAC team working on the PCF assessment.

He’s been part of the NIAC since March.

“I just saw it as really good, practical experience, getting out in the field,” he said. “Specially, seeing the different processes we see in different manufacturers and going to waste water plants.”