Page 6 - Green Builder Magazine March 2015 Issue

FIELD REPORT

4

News About Sustainability Issues and Green Products

Largest All-Geothermal Community
in the U.S. Breaks Ground
Norton Commons, a Traditional
Neighborhood Development in
Kentucky, will rely solely on

Ngeothermal heating and cooling.
ORTON COMMONS’S NORTH Village, a
residential community in Louisville, Kentucky,
is slated to become the largest all-geothermal
development in the country. All 1,800 lots are
being pre-drilled with geothermal borehole fields.
Aurora, Indiana-based Bucher Services
has begun drilling borehole fields, and expects to complete
125 lots this spring. Standard lots will include two 400-foot
boreholes; larger lots will include three. Corken Steel Products
Company, a partner and distributor for ClimateMaster Inc.,
will provide the heat pump units.
Norton Commons is Louisville’s first Traditional
Neighborhood Development (TND). The cornerstone of the
new urbanism movement, TNDs promote the creation and
restoration of diverse, walkable mixed-use communities. Once
completed, Norton Commons will include its own town center
www.greenbuildermedia.com 03.2015
CREDIT: CLIMATEMASTER
Ground-Breaking. Standard lots will supply two to three
tons of heating and cooling capactiy.

with restaurants, retail shopping and other commercial space.
The development chose geothermal heating and cooling for
several reasons, including energy savings, improved comfort
and reduced environmental impact. Using appropriately
sized geothermal heat pumps also keeps bulky, noisy air-
conditioning units from taking up valuable outdoor space.

For more information on the new North Village development,
visit www.nortoncommons.com

Wastewater Can Power Its Own Purification
Researchers from Scandinavian research
organization SINTEF demonstrate release energy in the form of electrons. Netzer and Colmenares
bacteria-powered fuel cells that clean searched for a species of bacteria which could not only
water and generate electricity. consume the waste products, but transfer electrons to a metal
electrode. The process generates small amounts of electricity—
Huge amounts of energy are used to treat and purify water—in the enough to drive a small fan, sensor or light-emitting diode. The
U.S., as much as 5 percent of all energy generated. But wastewater wastewater, which comes from a local dairy, is rich in organic
actually contains energy in the form of organic materials, which acids, but other sources would work just as well.
could be harvested and used in the purification process, itself.
In the future, the researchers hope to scale up and use the
Researchers Luis Cesar Colmenares and Roman Netzer with energy to power the water purification process. A microbial fuel
SINTEF, Scandinavia’s largest independent research group, have cell could also be used to produce hydrogen in almost the same
done just that, creating a demonstration plant of “microbiological way. These promising results were achieved as part of a SINTEF
fuel cells” powered by bacteria. As the organisms consume research project called “Greener than Green.”
the organic material—thereby cleaning the wastewater—they
Source: SINTEF