Rounding up the news which came out of the eventful BTME a couple of weeks ago, today we have a report on who won this year's Golf Environment Awards.
These awards are a great way of highlighting the sterling work which is being carried out in the profession. Environmental excellence is taking place at clubs across the country and the GEAs are a superb way of shining a light on what could be a little realised facet of greenkeeping.
Bob Taylor, head of ecology at the Sports Turf Research Institute, who organise the awards along with the R&A, said: “The awards recognise the achievements of individual golf clubs working to ensure best practice through all areas of sustainable management. This brings industry credibility and dismisses the long-held misconceptions that the golf industry overuses chemicals, fertiliser and water."
This misconception about the over use of water for example, is something which clubs can often face from a public unfamiliar with methods used by them to act sustainably. Many clubs for example will have a recyclable water wash-off system installed.
An interesting development where clubs in the future might be using their waste water for environmental good, which I read about last week, came from the University of Surrey. The clever people there are undertaking a three-year project, funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) UK, which is looking to turn waste water into energy.
The research, which will be led by Dr Siddharth Gadkari, will run for three and a half years and aligns with the UK Industrial Strategy, which highlights ‘clean growth’ as one of the greatest challenges of our time.
Dr Gadkari, a Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, will focus on developing mathematical models for something called "microbial electrosynthesis (MES) systems". These MES systems are apparently a type of bioelectrochemical system (BES) which make it possible to use the chemical energy from wastewater to generate electricity, hydrogen and valuable chemicals. Dr Gadkari’s project will involve collaboration with Newcastle University and Harbin Institute of Technology, China.
The University of Surrey says that currently billions of pounds and a significant amount of energy are spent in the UK every year on treating industrial, domestic and municipal wastewater, but this wastewater typically contains organic compounds which can be used as a valuable resource in MES systems.
Renewable energy sources can be used to supply the power which MES systems require to achieve an electrochemical reaction. This offers a novel way to store renewable electrical energy, which is not constantly available due to the nature of solar and wind power, in the chemical bonds of organic compounds.
The mathematical models Dr Gadkari aims to develop will improve engineers’ understanding of the mechanisms of MES systems and how they affect the environment.
Dr Gadkari said, “I am delighted to have been awarded this NERC Innovation Fellowship, which will support a very promising area of research. The ability to simultaneously process wastewater and CO2, and produce chemicals which will enable renewable energy, could be an important step towards cleaner energy in the UK. The project will deliver critical data which, complemented by experiments, will help develop the technology towards commercialisation.”
This sounds a great project and one which would be entirely suitable to tie in with not only golf clubs, but any other environmentally conscious turf professional work place.
It’ll be fascinating to follow the project’s progress and, if it does choose to use facilities from our sector, that could definitely act as more evidence to combat long-held misconceptions.
