大象传媒

Students from the School of Sustainable Energy Engineering emerged victorious at the 2025 Setty Family Foundation Applied Engineering Challenge (AEC).

JEMM Carbon, the student-led team, were awarded first place for their capstone project titled Design of Carbon Capture and Utilization Module. For their final project, fourth-year students Erin Flood, Jasleen Sandhu, Megan Zelasky and Michael La Grange focused on finding a solution to reduce building emissions of HVAC systems. The team designed a coconut shell-based activated carbon, retrofittable carbon capture unit to address this challenge by adsorption carbon capture and reutilization of the carbon dioxide to create sustainable concrete. This project aims to drastically reduce the carbon footprint of the building industry, which currently produces 37% of global emissions, contributing to advancements in decarbonization for existing HVAC systems.

The AEC is an international competition hosted by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), which challenges student-led groups to uncover engineering solutions to retrofit HVAC units for energy efficiency or repurpose them into recycled products.