Lanny Joyce, left, lake-source cooling project manager, and Kathy Krafft of the Sciencenter pile water up at one end of a Cayuga Lake demonstration model of the proposed project on display at the Sciencenter. Robert Barker/University Photography
Ever nearly freeze your toes off swimming in Cayuga Lake even on a hot day?
As summer wears on, a layer of warm water heated by the sun gradually deepens so that the lake eventually feels just about right. Yet the chilly water beneath that top layer remains just as cold in August as it was in December. Harnessing some of this "coolth" is essentially what Cornell's innovative lake-source cooling project is about, a principle illustrated in a new exhibit at the Sciencenter in Ithaca.
Members of Cornell's Utilities Department worked with Sciencenter exhibits builders Kathy Krafft and Eric Poysa to construct a hands-on display demonstrating and explaining the physics and some of the politics of constructing so large a project.
When the exhibit opened Nov. 17, lake-source cooling project manager Lanny Joyce explained the proposed project to a standing-room-only audience of parents and children. The parents, too, seemed intrigued by the exhibit, the lecture and a "lake-in-a-bottle" model illustrating the separation of warm and cool layers opening-day visitors were given to take home.
"Lanny's talk made us think we ought to start offering regular programs for adults," Krafft said. "There were a lot of people here we wouldn't normally see." She added that the cooperative endeavor had taught the Sciencenter a lot about demonstrating principles of hydraulics, and Cornell Utilities engineers developed new insight into constructing models of their work.
The lake-source cooling project proposes to cool campus laboratories and other work spaces by transferring the chill of Cayuga's water to water piped down and then back up to the campus, eliminating the need for most of Cornell's large, outdated and environmentally unfriendly chillers.
While some youngsters paddled at layers of liquid in a tank at the Sciencenter opening, trying to bunch it up at one end to simulate the wind's effect on the lake's layers, others pumped mica-flecked water alternately through open and closed loops of piping. They quickly learned that it takes much less energy to lift the water in a closed system, and, thus, why lake-source cooling can pump chilled water more than 450 feet vertically from lakeshore to campus and still use just 20 percent of the electricity it would take to power conventional chillers.
An interactive computer program designed by Joel Bender, Cornell Utilities' senior program analyst, illustrates the proposed path from campus to the lake and provides information about the lake itself and the feasibility studies and political processes lake-source cooling must circumnavigate.
The program also includes an extensive list of frequently asked questions, but visitors are invited to ask additional questions; Utilities staff will post the answers on the Sciencenter computer on a regular basis.
The exhibit will be at the Sciencenter until further notice. The Sciencenter, at 601 First St., is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m.