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Through funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Art Kney, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, will spend the fall semester in England to continue his groundbreaking research on magnetic water conditioning, an environmentally friendly technology for treating industrial wastewater.
Kney will collaborate with Simon Parsons, senior lecturer in the School of Water Sciences at Cranfield University, one of the few others in the world studying the chemical-free magnetic water conditioning process. The trip will allow Kney to further his interdisciplinary research program with Lafayette students and professors, as well as to develop plans for a relationship between Lafayette and Cranfield that will enhance research and teaching at both schools.
“Because of our similar interests, both Dr. Parsons and I are excited about the opportunity to work together and can envision collaborations beyond the [primary] area of research, including possible student and/or faculty exchanges, and guest lectures and course sharing via videoconferencing,” says Kney.
Last year, NSF awarded a $49,832 grant for magnetic water conditioning research to Kney and colleagues Javad Tavakoli, associate professor and head of chemical engineering, and Andrew Dougherty, associate professor of physics. “This exploratory research could provide important information for the removal of heavy metals,” noted NSF.
The School of Water Sciences is the United Kingdom’s leading postgraduate center specializing in research and training in process technologies for improving water quality. The staff has experience working with applied research on the treatment of water and wastewaters, including industrial and municipal effluents, potable supply, and pure and ultra-pure water. The university has its own sewage treatment works, and the School of Water Sciences has sponsored research projects with all ten of the water and sewage utility companies in England and Wales. It recently secured a $1.5 million grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
In March, Cranfield University hosted the First International Water Association Conference on Scaling and Corrosion in Water and Wastewater Systems, where Kney presented a research paper he co-authored with Tavakoli, Dougherty, and Lafayette chemical engineering majors Shawna Showalter ’04 (Waynesboro, Pa.) and Fernando Molina-Polo ’04 (Bethlehem, Pa.).
Co-author of a chapter on an aspect of this field in the recently published Ion Exchange and Solvent Extraction, Kney is currently studying the treatment of wastewater with regard to phosphate and nitrate, problematic nutrients that lead to algal blooms throughout the United States and Europe.
He has researched chemical-free water treatment with a number of Lafayette students, including Marquis Scholar Jessica Molek ’03, who graduated summa cum laude this year with honors in chemical engineering and received a three-year Graduate Fellowship from the National Science Foundation in April. Molek presented her work at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research during her sophomore and junior years. She also coauthored a paper with Kney, Tavakoli, and Dougherty that was presented and published in the proceedings of the Industrial Water Conference last December and the 2001 World Water and Environmental Resources Congress, both held in Orlando, Fla.
“I found it very motivating that the experiments I performed and the data I obtained influenced our future planning,” she says. “My problem-solving skills improved as I compared, contrasted, and looked for patterns in my results. I learned to think in new ways as I worked backward from a hypothesis to methodically prove or disprove an idea. My self-confidence was greatly improved as I was given the chance to come up with my own hypothesis and allowed to proceed in the direction I thought best.”
Another magnetic water conditioning research partner, chemical engineering major and Trustee Scholarship recipient Katie Barillas ’04 (Bethlehem, Pa.), notes, “I have dreamed of what it would be like to work for a research and development department of a large company, and this particular experience was quite similar to that.” Her presentation of the research earned third place at the 2001 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Student Conference’s National Student Poster Paper Competition in Reno, Nev.
Earlier this year, NSF provided Kney with funding for another water treatment research program. He is sharing the $100,000 grant with two professors from other institutions to work with students in developing a two-week, undergraduate learning unit on state-of-the-art methods to detect estrogen in surface water, an emerging national and global environmental problem.
Kney also has studied local water pollution with several Lafayette civil engineering students, including Nathan Tregger ’03 (Niantic, Conn.) and Jaeyoung Jang ’04 (Cochabamba, Bolivia), who shared their findings at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Tregger presented further research with Kney this year at the Pennsylvania Water Environment Association’s 75th Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition June 22-25 in State College after graduating cum laude with honors in civil engineering and a second degree in mathematics.
They used data from several sources, including a volunteer monitoring program established three years ago by Kney and David Brandes, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, to determine the impact of changing local conditions such as population increases. Each month during the school year, students collect samples from eight locations along the main branch of the Bushkill Creek, spanning most of the watershed.
“I learned much about water quality and wetlands, which are an important part of the civil engineering field,” says Tregger, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in civil engineering with a concentration in structural engineering at Northwestern University, which along with Johns Hopkins and Princeton offered him a graduate fellowship. He was honored as one of the nation’s top undergraduate civil engineering students in the December 2002 issue of the national magazine CE News.
The students’ participation in the research project was funded by Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, in which students work closely with faculty on research while earning a stipend. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
In another project related to water quality, Kney helped advise a group of students representing different majors that developed an inexpensive method of removing arsenic from drinking water in New Mexico last school year. They presented their findings April 6-10 at the 13th annual International Environmental Design Contest at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.
Kney also supervised a student team that took first place for its design paper and earned an overall honorable mention in April in the 2003 Pennsylvania-Delaware Region of the National Concrete Canoe Competition.
Last year, along with Roger Ruggles, associate professor and head of civil and environmental engineering, Kney mentored 15 civil engineering seniors who developed proposals that helped the borough of Alpha, N.J., decide what to do with its aging John Dolak Memorial Pool.
Along several other Lafayette engineering professors, Kney received a $366,364 NSF grant last year to equip four undergraduate research laboratories at Acopian Engineering Center, including the environmental engineering research laboratories, which he heads.
He advises the Lafayette Environmental Awareness and Protection student group and the student chapter of American Society of Civil Engineers, winning the ASCE Advisor Award last year.
He also serves on Lafayette’s Landis Community Outreach Committee and the Environmental Science Minor Committee. As a graduate student, he won the Lehigh University Service Award, the Graduate Student Leadership Award, and the Pennsylvania Water Environment Association Student Research Award.
Kney regularly shares his research through scientific publications and presentations at conferences in his field. He is a member of American Society of Civil Engineers, American Chemical Society, American Water Work Association (AWWA), Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, Eastern Pennsylvania Water Pollution Control Operators Association, Pennsylvania Water Environment Association, and Water Environment Federation.
He belongs to the Bushkill Stream Conservancy Board of Directors, the Pennsylvania Watershed Science Conference Steering Committee, the AWWA/ASCE Water Treatment Plant Design 4th Edition Steering Committee, the ASCE/Environmental and Water Resources Institute Water Supply Engineering Committee, and Lucent Technology’s Local Environmental Advisory Group. He served as vice president of the Lehigh Valley Section of ASCE in 2000-2001.
He has given talks to the Green Valley Coalition Water Symposium in Bethlehem, Pa.; Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., and The Polytechnic School of the Army, Quito, Ecuador.
Before joining the Lafayette faculty in 1999, Kney served as environmental site investigator for Merritt/Osborn Environmental Consulting, Inc. in Newtown, Pa. He earned a Ph.D. in environmental engineering and master’s in civil engineering from Lehigh University in 1999 and 1995, respectively; a bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude) in civil engineering from University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in 1993; and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Saint Francis College in 1977.