Engineering Commons^™

Simulating Microbial Electrolysis For Renewable Hydrogen Production Integrated With Separation In Biorefinery, Christian James Wilson

Masters Theses

Biomass conversion to hydrocarbon fuels requires significant amounts of hydrogen. Fossil resources typically supply hydrogen via steam reforming. A new technology called microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) has emerged which can generate hydrogen from organic sources and biomass. The thermochemical route to fuels via pyrolysis generates bio-oil aqueous phase (BOAP) which can be used to make hydrogen. A process engineering and economic analysis of this technology was conducted for application in biorefineries of the future. Steam methane reforming, bio-oil separation and microbial electrolysis unit operations were simulated in Aspen Plus to derive the mass and energy balance for conversion of biomass. …

Automatic Sleep Stages Classification, Maryam Zokaeinikoo

Masters Theses

In this thesis, we first develop an efficient automated classification algorithm for sleep stages identification. Polysomnography recordings (PSGs) from twenty subjects were used in this study and features were extracted from the time{frequency representation of the electroencephalography (EEG) signal. The classification of the extracted features was done using random forest classifier. The performance of the new approach is tested by evaluating the accuracy of each sleep stages and total accuracy. The results shows improvement in all five sleep stages compared to previous works.

Then, we present a simulation decision algorithm for switching between sleep interventions. This method improves the percentage …

An Application Of The Universal Verification Methodology, Rui Ma

Masters Theses

The Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) package is an open-source SystemVerilog library, which is used to set up a class-based hierarchical testbench. UVM testbenches improve the reusability of Verilog testbenches. Direct Memory Access (DMA) plays an important role in modern computer architecture. When using DMA to transfer data between a host machine and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) accelerator, a modularized DMA core on the FPGA frees the host side Central Processing Unit(CPU) during the transfer, helps to save FPGA resources, and enhances performance. Verifying the functionality of a DMA core is essential before mapping it to the FPGA. In this thesis, …

Using Real-Time Location Systems & Simulation Modeling To Improve Healthcare, Colby Thomas Mattie

Masters Theses

In the healthcare industry, facility managers often find themselves with limited resources, lack of timely data, and unexpected crises that they have to respond too. Their options are based on hastily made assumptions and a limited understanding of all implications of the problems at hand. This scenario has become a concerning issue for the healthcare industry where problems can arise at any time and every minute counts. The healthcare industry is also littered with wasteful processes and regulations that increase the cost for physicians and facility operators and decrease the overall care for the patients. This is very evident in …

An Fpga Based Implementation Of The Exact Stochastic Simulation Algorithm, Phani Bharadwaj Vanguri

Masters Theses

Mathematical and statistical modeling of biological systems is a desired goal for many years. Many biochemical models are often evaluated using a deterministic approach, which uses differential equations to describe the chemical interactions. However, such an approach is inaccurate for small species populations as it neglects the discrete representation of population values, presents the possibility of negative populations, and does not represent the stochastic nature of biochemical systems. The Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA) developed by Gillespie is able to properly account for these inherent noise fluctuations. Due to the stochastic nature of the Monte Carlo simulations, large numbers of simulations …

Computational Investigations Of Characteristic Performance Improvements For Subkilogram Laser Micropropulsion, Richard Joel Thompson

Masters Theses

Experimental investigations have evaluated the feasibility of using laser-driven plasma microthrusters for small-thrust, high-specific-impulse space maneuvers, particularly for micro- and nanosatellite missions. Recent work made use of the Mach2 hydromagnetics code for the construction of an adequate computational model of the micro-thruster opera- tion. This thesis expounds on this previous work by extending the computational modeling capabilities, allowing for the determination of plasma plume properties and characteristic performance assessment of the microthruster; this allows for further computational investi- gation of the performance improvements achieved by new design considerations. Two par- ticular design changes are implemented and measured: (i) the simulation …