Mines Sustainability Scavenger Hunt:
Stop #10

Say “Hello” to Hill Hall!

Hill Hall is home to the Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department.  Check out the Friday Free Pour (once it kicks back up) that takes place in the department’s foundry and is an opportunity for students across Mines to experience sand casting to make an aluminum object. The biggest energy user on campus, Hill Hall’s foundry and numerous energy intensive research projects make Hill a great place to look for energy savings. 

One way that Mines reduces energy use is to combine old individual building chillers into centralized chiller plants that serve multiple buildings. Similarly, Mines used to get super discounted “waste” steam from Coors, however much of that steam would be lost in the long trip to campus. Recently, Mines built its own steam plant and now operates much more efficiently (and without the coal steam plant Coors uses). In fact, switching to an on-site plant reduced campus GHG emissions by 46,807 metric tons of CO2(MTCO2) per year. That’s the emissions equivalent of driving across the U.S. 28,715 times!  

Hint for the next stop: the infamous home to Chem 1 and its many, many, many labs