EPA Grant Facilitates Engineering Students' Research of Sustainable Concrete

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced that a team from Manhattan College was one of 38 groups from universities across the country to receive a $15,000 grant for a research proposal toward a sustainability project.

The grant is part of the EPA’s People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) program, a student-design competition where colleges and university students can benefit people, promote prosperity, and protect the planet by designing solutions that move us toward a more sustainable future.

Led by Goli Nossoni, Ph.D., in the civil and environmental engineering department at Manhattan College, Feksi Basha ’16, Umar Miah ’17 and Daniel Hussey ’15 ’17 (M.S.) are working to determine the efficacy of a new sustainable concrete to alleviate corrosion of steel reinforcement in the presence of chloride.

The proposed project intends to improve the health and welfare of people, especially in the three states of Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, by using a hazardous waste byproduct of the mining industry in a sustainable application. This application has the potential to result in corrosion resistant infrastructure that can save up to $5.2 billion annually in the cost of maintaining the country’s aging infrastructure. The research will also benefit the planet’s future environment by reducing the demand for natural aggregate and replacing it with a hazardous byproduct, resulting in the removal of the byproduct from the environment.

Since being awarded the EPA P3 Phase I grant, the Manhattan College team is now eligible to compete for a Phase II grant, an award up to $75,000 to further the project design, implement it in the field and move it toward the marketplace. The trio of Jaspers will showcase their research and compete for that grant at the 12th Annual EPA P3 National Sustainable Design Expo at the USA Science and Engineering Festival from April 16-17 in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.