Engineering Commons^™

Sustainable Travel Incentives Optimization In Multimodal Networks, Hossein Ghafourian

Masters Theses

Tripod, an integrated bi-level transportation management system, is a smartphone application from the potential user’s point of view which would be instantly accessed prior to performing the trip. Since there are constantly several alternatives for any trip, Tripod considers a series and combination of various parameters, including departure time, mode and route, and rewards for each alternative with a number of redeemable points for goods and services called “Tokens”. The framework responsible for computing the optimized number of tokens awarded to the set of available alternatives in order to minimize the system-wide energy consumption under a constrained Token budget, is …

Autoplug: An Automated Metadata Service For Smart Outlets, Lurdh Pradeep Reddy Ambati

Masters Theses

Low-cost network-connected smart outlets are now available for monitoring, controlling, and scheduling the energy usage of electrical devices. As a result, such smart outlets are being integrated into automated home management systems, which remotely control them by analyzing and interpreting their data. However, to effectively interpret data and control devices, the system must know the type of device that is plugged into each smart outlet. Existing systems require users to manually input and maintain the outlet metadata that associates a device type with a smart outlet. Such manual operation is time-consuming and error-prone: users must initially inventory all outlet-to-device mappings, …

A Bug’S Life: Integration Of Anaerobic Digestion And Bioelectrochemical Systems For Enhanced Energy Recovery From Wastewater Solids And Other Waste Substrates, Jeff Ryan Beegle

Masters Theses

Organic waste streams, like domestic wastewater and municipal solid waste, have the potential to be used as feedstocks for biotechnology processes to produce high value products and energy. This thesis investigated the technological, economical, and environmental potential for integrated anaerobic digestion (AD) and bioelectrochemical system (BES) platforms as they were theoretically and physically evaluated for energy recovery from domestic wastewater. The first chapter of this thesis compared the theoretical energy efficiencies of converting waste directly into electricity, using AD and BES alone and in various combinations. This chapter reviewed the experimentally demonstrated energy efficiencies reported in the literature with comparisons …

Second Law Of Thermodynamics Analysis Of An Internal Combustion Engine Fueled With Methane, Muataz Abotabik

Masters Theses

The second law of thermodynamics is a powerful tool for calculating the amount of energy that can be converted to work (i.e., the exergy or availability of a system), which cannot be predicted using the first law. The objectives of this research project are to quantify the availability during the compression, combustion and expansion processes of a spark-ignited engine fueled with methane; and to highlight differences in the thermo-mechanical availability of the ideal and spark-ignition (SI) engine cycles. A cooperative single-cylinder research engine was used to measure the data required for availability analysis at equivalence ratios ranging between 0.83 and …

A Statistical Analysis Of A 4.5 Mw Solar Energy Center, Archit Patnaik

Masters Theses

"This project helps a regional utility evaluate the performance of their 4.5 MW photovoltaic plant. The performance evaluation consists of characterizing the peak and average power and energy output of the plant over varying time periods. A characterization of the output power drops, or dips, is done by performing a statistical analysis of the photovoltaic plant output data. Dips are characterized by dip frequency, depth of dip, energy loss by dip, and dip duration. The results of this study will help the utility to select appropriate voltage regulating equipment on the basis of dip characteristics, and thus, optimize the performance …

Design, Scale-Up, Six Sigma In Processing Different Feedstocks In A Fixed Bed Downdraft Biomass Gasifier, Sai Chandra Teja Boravelli

Masters Theses

"This thesis mainly focuses on design and process development of a downdraft biomass gasification processes. The objective is to develop a gasifier and process of gasification for a continuous steady state process. A lab scale downdraft gasifier was designed to develop the process and obtain optimum operating procedure.

Sustainable and dependable sources such as biomass are potential sources of renewable energy and have a reasonable motivation to be used in developing a small scale energy production plant for countries such as Canada where wood stocks are more reliable sources than fossil fuels. This thesis addresses the process of thermal conversion …

Comprehensive Benefits Of Green Roofs, Madison R. Gibler

Masters Theses

"Green infrastructure uses vegetation, soils, and natural processes to manage water and create healthier urban environments, providing traditional roof services and alternative stormwater management technologies. Other benefits and impacts are not yet fully understood or valued. Research conducted assesses specific stormwater benefits of green roofs, providing information on nutrient leaching from media; and analyzes potential energy benefits through side-by-side comparisons of full-scale white, traditional black rubber, and green roofs in the mid-continent Missouri climate. Roofing media selection impacted leaching of nutrients, suspended solids, and organic carbon from the tested green roof media. Thermal properties were investigated at the building level, …

Measurement And Verification - Retro-Commissioning Of A Leed Gold Rated Building Through Means Of An Energy Model: Are Aggressive Energy Simulation Models Reliable?, Justin M. Marmaras

Masters Theses

During the construction of the new 3 story, 25,000+ square foot police station, a decision was made to participate in the LEED program to ensure the building had low operating costs, reduced emissions, conserved water and overall energy. The design of the building includes a primary-secondary ground source heat pump (GSHP) loop, a Dedicated Outside Air System (DOAS) with Energy Recovery Ventilation (ERV) wheel, all controlled by CO2 monitoring through Demand Control Ventilation (DCV) to supply heat pumps located in each space; all monitored by a Building Automation System (BAS).

The building’s future energy performance was predicted through an energy …

Optimal Control Of Energy Efficient Buildings, Cale David Nelson

Masters Theses

The building sector consumes a large part of the energy used in the United States and is responsible for nearly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is economically and environmentally important to reduce the building energy consumption to realize massive energy savings. Commercial buildings are complex, multi-physics, and highly stochastic dynamic systems. Recent work has focused on integrating modern modeling, simulation, and control techniques to solving this challenging problem. The overall focus of this thesis is directed toward designing an energy efficient building by controlling room temperature. One approach is based on a distributed parameter model represented by a …

Analysis Of Passive Louver Shading Systems And Impact On Interior Environment, Cory Joseph Brennan

Masters Theses

An installed passive louver shading systems can affect the heating, cooling, and lighting loads of any building, by altering the amount of solar energy, in the form of light and heat, from entering. The benefits of a louver system are derived from the application of solar geometry incident on the site and the climate within the area. By optimizing a passive louver system's design parameters, a building can reduce the total annual energy consumption due to artificial heating, cooling loads and artificial lighting. This research has implemented simulation modeling software, Energy Plus, to predict the effect of passive louver shades …

Power Management For Gpu-Cpu Heterogeneous Systems, Xue Li

Masters Theses

In recent years, GPU-CPU heterogeneous architectures have been increasingly adopted in high performance computing, because of their capabilities of providing high computational throughput. However, current research focuses mainly on the performance aspects of GPU-CPU architectures, while improving the energy efficiency of such systems receives much less attention. There are few existing efforts that try to lower the energy consumption of GPU-CPU architectures, but they address either GPU or CPU in an isolated manner and thus cannot achieve maximized energy savings. In this paper, we propose GreenGPU, a holistic energy management framework for GPU-CPU heterogeneous architectures. Our solution features a two-tier …

A Life Cycle Comparison Of Light-Frame Wood And Insulated Concrete Form Building Envelopes: Energy Use And Green House Gases, Sherman Authur Matthews

Masters Theses

Given the building sector’s substantial contribution to global energy use and green house gas (GHG) emissions, it is of great importance that only the most effective building envelopes are utilized. Conventional light-frame wood building envelopes are highly popular due to their ease of construction and building economy; however the life cycle performance of the building envelope is often overlooked when this selection is made. Although insulated concrete form (ICF) building envelopes generally require a substantially higher embodied energy input, it should be considered that improvements during a building’s operation phase can offers significant energy returns, ultimately reducing the building’s life …