Clean Air
Indoor Environmental Quality
Concern for the environment we live in is not exclusively for the natural world outdoor. This program in Environmental Health and Safety hopes to provide and maintain a healthy learning and working environment for students, faculty, staff and visitors inside all campus facilities.
Air Modeling
With a variety of research labs and other sources of air emissions around campus Cornell uses air dispersion modeling to ensure the safety of both people and the environment.
Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine (CCVM): Replacing an incinerator with a "non-burn" technology
Final design has begun on a waste management facility for the treatment and destruction of pathological waste (i.e., animal carcasses and bedding) and conventional medical waste (i.e., plastics used in research and patient care). The new facility will replace an existing pathological waste incinerator and a system that ships conventional medical waste to an off-site commercial treatment facility. The new facility will eliminate the air emissions from the current incinerator, which destroys 750,000 pounds of carcass waste per year. The new technology was chosen by representatives of Cornell and the local community through a two year collaborative shared decision-making process.
Utilities Department
The Ithaca Campus has central systems for the production and distribution of heat, electricity and chilled water. The Central Heating Plant is a combined heat and power plant that uses coal, natural gas and #6 fuel oil as fuels. Because of the combined cogeneration of steam heat and electricity, the electric production is very efficient - over twice as efficient as a convention electric power plant. For pollution control, the natural gas/oil boilers have state-of-the-art low NOx burners and burn low nitrogen fuel. The coal boilers burn low sulfur fuel and have baghouses to remove the flyash from the stack emissions. Coal is used because it is less than half the price of gas or oil for an equivalent amount of energy.
Of Related Interest
Did You Know?
Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine will be disposing of its waste through a clean "non-burn" technology. The university met with members of 17 Ithaca community groups over two years to arrive at a consensus-based decision to use this new, more expensive technology.
