Beacon Middle School students (l-r) Peyton Carter, Ben Wiswell and Mariama Hitchens took first place in Delaware in the U.S. Army's eCybermission online science contest.
Beacon students win Army science contest
Project would use nanotechnology, wind farm to filter water
By Leah Hoenen | May 16, 2011
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(Source: Submitted) Beacon Middle School students (l-r) Peyton Carter, Ben Wiswell and Mariama Hitchens took first place in Delaware in the U.S. Army's eCybermission online science contest.
Lewes — Three Beacon Middle School students have envisioned a way to use wind energy to remove excess nitrogen from water. As they researched the possibilities, they realized existing technology is not quite up to the task, but they hope one day to see their project realized.
"It would be cool to grow up and see these things and put them into action," said student Ben Wiswell.
Ben, Mariama Hitchens and Peyton Carter took first place in Delaware in the U.S. Army's eCybermission program, a web-based technology competition that is free and open to students in grades six through nine.
"We had to come up with a solution, locally or nationally, to a problem we picked," said Ben Wiswell.
Ben's primary interest is environmental issues, while Peyton gravitates toward nanotechnology. Mariama enjoys learning about fossil fuels. The three decided to find a way to fix the problem of nitrogen pollution in water.
They designed a system to use nanotechnology to filter nitrates out of water. "They are so small, they go through nanofilters. We started to realize the solution couldn’t work with today's technology," Ben said. "We proposed an idea to use the wind farm to power a massive desalinization plant."
He said the plant would use multistage, flash distillation. "Basically, we'd evaporate the water a bunch of times," Ben said.
The students would place their plant offshore next to the planned Bluewater Wind farm, returning cleaned water to shore through a pipe. The nitrogen they removed from the water would be put into the ocean, where it would be diluted to safe levels, Ben said.
Ben said the project could be done with the wind farm at its currently-proposed size.
Students researched the cost of desalinization and the cost of different machines used to clean water, Mariama said.
Ben said a lot more planning went into the project than the students anticipated.
While the project was science-related, but Ben describes himself as more of a math student, explaining he focused on numbers-based research.
Mariama said she's realized how much more work needs to be done to advance science.
Peyton said as a result of the competition, she's now considering engineering as a possible career.
