The Visionary Lecture series, a joint effort between the USGBC-NCC Capital Branch and the AIA Central Valley Chapter, continues this June with a presentation by Professor Roger Boulton, the Stephen Sinclair Scott Professor of Enology and Chemical Engineering at the Department of Viticulture and Enology, University of California at Davis.Professor Boulton started dreaming of a self-sustaining winery more than ten years before the Mondavi Institute built its LEED Platinum Winery and Brewery. His passion for rainwater harvesting, an ideal source for pure reverse osmosis water for scientific experiments, and his need to prevent deposits on valuable equipment, fueled his study for systems for the new facility. As a result, the new winery, brewery, and food-processing complex now serves as a test bed for production processes and techniques that conserve water, energy, and other vital resources.
There is an auxiliary building that houses equipment adjacent to the winery that will make it possible to capture, store, and recycle rainwater. The proposed system reuses 90 percent of the captured cleaning water volume each cycle—requiring only a fifth of the normal water volume for cleaning. Eventually, the facility plans to be “water positive” and completely independent of the main campus water line.
