LSU Team Has Another Successful Year at WERC Competition

April 20, 2020

LSU Environmental Engineering students have competed in the WERC Environmental Design Competition at New Mexico State University since 1996. When the 30th annual edition of the event went "virtual" this year, LSU Environmental Engineering teams had to immediately alter their teamwork strategies, moving from face-to-face group work in a laboratory to remote work scattered across the United States.

The virtual format consisted of written reports as usual, oral presentations to engineering practitioner judges via Zoom, and bench-scale presentations consisting of in-depth conversations with smaller groups of judges over a two-hour period.  Despite differences in this year’s event compared to years passed, the LSU team had another great year, winning three Task Awards and a Judge’s Choice Award.

Students won tasks submitted by Freeport-McMoran for an algae-based remediation system (phycoremediation) for acid-mine drainage and a task submitted by Los Alamos National Laboratory for a water treatment system that recovered valuable quantities of rare earth elements (lanthanum, europium, and neodymium) from produced water.

Students also won the highly competitive open task for a project that designed unit operation to remove microplastics from wastewater. A second open task team won a Judge’s Choice Award for community involvement for its continued efforts in the blight to bioswales project in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans.

  • Task 3: Heavy Metal Removal via Phycoremediation—First Place

Nafis Choudhury

Johnny Crouere

Jacob Bougere

Thinh Huynh

Natalie Nelson

Monica Nguyen

Devon Dao

Abdullah Baroun

  • Task 5: Produced Water: Rare Earth Element Recovery and Clean Water Production—First Place

Sammie Parks

Raymond Poche

Emily Thompson

Bilquis Williams

Miller Warrington

Sidd Srinath

  • Task 6: Design of a Microplastic Removal Process for Use in a Wastewater Treatment Plant—First Place

Emily Fertitta

Cougar Chichester

Lauren Bauhs

Garrett Melton

Chelsi Parker

Jonathan Efferson

Stephen Chamberlain

  • Development of a Blight to BioSwales System to Assist New Orleans, Louisiana Storm Water System—Judge's Choice for Community Involvement

Joseph Beatty

George Carson

Bayllie Breaux

Chi Phan