Colombia-USA Water-Energy-Food Nexus Alliance

The Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus Alliance is an international, transdisciplinary partnership focused on understanding and addressing the complex challenges associated with water-energy-food systems. The Alliance spearheads and facilitates interventions that advance sustainable development and foster capacity-building in collaboration with both local and global partners.

The Alliance coordinates and leverages resources and capabilities of partners, public and private stakeholders, and communities to generate and disseminate knowledge. The group works together to catalyze policies for climate resilience solutions, foster economic growth, and promote inclusive development with the goal of ensuring food, energy, and water security for local communities in Colombia and across Latin America.

This project is a collaboration between Siela Maximova and Christopher Scott of The Pennsylvania State University (USA), Luis Alejandro Arias and Isaac Dyner of Fundación Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano (Colombia), Camilo Younes of Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Colombia), Andres Torres and Angela Moncaleano of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia), and David Purkey of the Stockholm Environment Institute, Latin America Centre (Sweden).

To learn more, contact project leads Siela Maximova (snm104@psu.edu) and Christopher Scott (cascott@psu.edu). 

In The News

Colombia-USA WEF Nexus Alliance holds week of meetings, planning at Penn State

Colombia-USA WEF Nexus Alliance announces partnership with Amazon

Colombia-USA WEF Nexus Alliance announces the first WEF Nexus Seed Grants

Penn State expands WEF nexus activities through Colombian partnership

Penn State and UTADEO faculty partner to support rural development in Colombia

Water-energy-food research event to explore US-Colombian partnership

Cacao for Peace Colombia

Colombia has a large agricultural sector that on average generates approximately 13 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Approximately 80 percent of Colombian producers cultivate less than two hectares of land and are challenged by high production costs, inadequate market infrastructure, insufficient agricultural extension services, and slow technology transfer. In addition, rural violence and lawlessness have negatively impacted agricultural investments and growth. Working with multiple partners from the US and Colombia, the Cacao for Peace project supports Colombia’s peace process by establishing a road map for post‐conflict agricultural development, focusing on cacao, and facilitating initiatives to improve economic opportunity, stability, and peace in targeted rural areas (i.e., peace geography).

This project is a collaboration between Siela Maximova and Mark Guiltinan of The Pennsylvania State University in collaboration with researchers from The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Colombian Corporation for Agricultural Research (AGROSAVIA), Colombian Cacao Producer Association (FEDECACAO), Purdue University (USA), University of Florida (USA), United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The project is funded by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Department of Agriculture: Foreign Agriculture Research Service (USDA-FAS).

To learn more, contact project lead Dr. Siela Maximova (snm104@psu.edu).

In The News 

https://www.centredaily.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/article155047004.html

Thermo-hydraulic and Exergoeconomic Optimization of Solar Air Heaters Mounted with Louvered Fins with Potential Application on Brazilian Agrobusiness

This multidisciplinary research project centers around computational and experimental heat transfer enhancement through passive flow control. The project combines experimental and numerical investigations, sensitivity analyses and optimization procedures.

The thermal-hydraulic performance of solar collectors depends on the ability of the working fluid to remove the heat stored on the devices. The benefits of heat transfer enhancements using special surface geometries are augmented by increasing the heat transfer coefficient, and/or the surface area. Using modified surfaces reduces the thermal resistance, and thus increases the convective heat transfer coefficient.

To learn more, contact Dr. Tamy Guimarães (guimaraes@psu.edu).