Over the past several years, Tufts has undergone a number of high-profile changes to become more environmentally safe and friendly, including the erection of Sophia Gordon Hall with solar panels on the roof, optional windmill power for students' dorm rooms and ever-present recycling bins across campus.
But while Tufts has gained recognition for its public efforts - it was named one of the nation's top "green" colleges by Grist.org in August - it has also been working on a variety of behind-the-scenes improvements to further reduce the university's environmental footprint.
The Tufts Science and Technology Center, standing unobtrusively at the fringe of Tufts' Medford campus on Colby Street, is rarely visited by the majority of Tufts undergraduates. Full of state-of-the art technology, it is mostly utilized by biomedical and chemical engineering students, and hosts "state-of-the-art, high energy and condensed matter research," according to Tufts.edu.
But like any older building, it has had its share of flaws over the past few years, the most prominent of which is climate control. The building is too cold in the winter and too warm in the summer. As a result, it has required large amounts of energy for heating and cooling during extreme temperatures.
But after a series of upgrades to the Center's boiler room and a number of other technical renovations - virtually invisible among Tufts' much publicized environmental efforts - the building's energy profile and energy consumption will vastly improve this winter, Tufts officials say.
According to campus Energy Manager Betsy Isenstein, the upgrades began in 2002 with numerous improvements to the lighting system receiving. The changes focused mainly on increasing the level of energy efficiency by replacing older fluorescent bulbs with newer and higher quality bulbs that produce more light with less energy.
Perhaps the most obvious work was done in what had previously been a machine shop in the Science and Technology Center, where much of the lighting was replaced with compact fluorescent light bulbs, providing not only better quality illumination, but more environmentally and energy-efficient light as well.
"[There have been] tons of lighting upgrades, but you just don't know about them," Isenstein said. She said subtlety is the theme of many of the upgrades, but emphasized that it does not decrease their importance.
Less illuminating than the upgrades to the lighting, but potentially more noticeable in the long run, is the work that was done in the boiler room of the Science and Technology Center. In November, Tufts replaced the building's old, steam-driven boiler with what Isenstein described as an "extremely efficient" new type of technology called a "condensing boiler."
According to Isenstein, a condensing boiler functions rather similarly to a normal boiler, but with several key differences. In an ordinary steam boiler, water is heated, producing steam, which can in turn be used to provide heat to a building. Throughout the process, she said, a tremendous amount of energy is lost as heat escapes.
In a condensing boiler, a percentage of the previously wasted heat is used to augment the boiler's processes. According to the Web site of AERCO, the company that manufactured the new boilers used in the Science and Technology Center, condensing boilers can be up to 10 percent more efficient than standard steam boilers.
Isenstein said the building's increased energy efficiency is beneficial not only to the environment, but to the university's budget as well. She estimated that since these new condensing boilers were installed in November, Tufts has saved $55,000 in reduced energy costs.
Though the lighting and boiler upgrades were the largest upgrades, the building has undergone a variety of smaller changes as well. In 2003, the Science and Technology Center underwent a "retro-commissioning" campaign designed to restore the building to the original energy output it had when it was first built. Over the course of the campaign, Isenstein said that several nonfunctioning heat recovery units were found and replaced.
Although many Tufts students may be unaware of the upgrades themselves, their effects have been felt in more than just reduced bills and less pollution. Doug Matheson, a junior chemical engineering major said the ventilation and heating systems in the building have been poor in past years, but have recently improved.
"So far this year, I haven't had any problems," he said.
