As the final project for Architecture for Non-Architects, I designed a cafe. I started the project by studying and diagramming six different cafes (top two rows in the image below), looking for commonalities between the designs. I noticed that most of the cafes and coffee shops I observed had a very similar layout, with a…
At Rice University, I worked in an interdisciplinary team to develop a device to help developmentally delayed children learn to walk properly. While this is not strictly related to sustainability, it was my first deep dive into engineering and solidified my choice to pursue mechanical engineering. Watch the video to see our final solution in…
Our first project in Advanced Sustainable Design during the spring semester of my junior year was to analyze a proposed levee system for Galveston Bay using the ISI Envision rating system. The SSPEED Center has been working on a Houston-Galveston Area Protection System (H-GAPS) to protect the region against a very large hurricane event. They have developed…
I worked in a team to develop and analyze a business plan to replace the primarily coal-fired boilers at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis, which provides electricity and steam for the brewery’s operations. Note that this was a class project for CEVE 307: Energy and the Environment, which we completed using publicly available data and was no way…
My final project for ENST 202: Culture, Energy, and the Environment (Spring 2014) focused on climate change denial, especially it’s sources and solutions. This course marks the first time I knew I wanted to dedicate my career to sustainability issues, but it also was the first time I understood the impact of social factors in sustainability issues.…
One of my architecture projects was to describe a space using a video exactly 60 seconds long. Given my love of west coast swing, I chose to examine a dance studio, focusing on the different atmospheres in the space during practice (the first half of the video) and a social dance (the second half of the video).…
Tasked with designing a new icon for Houston, I chose to examine a post-oil future in which outdated rigs from the gulf of Mexico could be repurposed as landmarks and historical sites. In this image, the platform is in a park outside of the city and open to the public for hiking and exploration, serving…
I wrote an article, published in Engineering News Record, about how to encourage students to continue studying engineering. Read the article here!
In 2017, I started a new project: quantifying my personal impact on the environment. This will be a particularly interesting year to undertake this project, since I will be graduating college and starting work as a full time engineer. Thus, I can investigate and compare the impacts associated with dorm vs. apartment life, walking to classes…
This section describes my Senior Design Project at Rice University. Project Overview For decades after World War II, over 100,000 sites in the US were used to dispose of chlorinated solvents, which were commonly used in industry for cleaning, dry cleaning, degreasing, pesticide manufacturing [1], and manufacturing vinylidene chloride, HFC-143a, and other chemicals [2]. However,…
Read more Cost-Effective Chlorinated Solvent Remediation via Zero-Valent Iron Injection
Nicole Moes 