Design, Construction And Evaluation Of Seven Shank, Three Point Ripper, Daniel Degraaf

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This senior project discusses the design, construction, and testing of a seven shank, three point ripper built for de Graaf Ranch. This ripper will replace older equipment that was not built to withstand the horsepower developed by more modern tractors that are used by de Graaf Ranch. This tillage device is designed to meet ASABE standards for horsepower requirements of farm equipment. This implement incorporates a shear pin design that will protect the frame from damage in the event that the ripper encounters a subsoil obstacle that would significantly damage the equipment. The shank was designed to reduce the disturbance …

Evaluation Of An Intensive Data Collection System For Tennessee Surface Water Quality Assessment And Watershed Model Calibration, Hannah Marie Armstrong

Masters Theses

Water quality regulators, such as the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, are challenged by data scarcity when identifying surface water quality impairment causes and pollutant sources. Surface water quality model users also seek to identify pollutant sources and design and place best management practices to efficiently improve water quality, but have insufficient data for model calibration. This research documents the design and evaluation of a novel, intensive water quality data collection system consisting of a automatic sampler, bi-weekly grab sampling, and a long term deployment sonde. System design characteristics that were emphasized included a focus on gathering data for …

Conversion Of Glycerol To Lactic Acid Under Low Corrosive Conditions With Homogeneous And Heterogeneous Catalysts, Lu Chen

Masters Theses

With the increasing demand for biodiesel, the accumulation of byproduct, crude glycerol has become a problem which needs to be solved. Lactic acid is one of the value-added chemical which can be produced from glycerol that has wide uses in food and chemical industry. Although glycerol can be converted to lactic acid with an alkali as the catalyst at high glycerol conversion (100 mol%) and lactic acid yield (around 90 mol%), the high alkalinity would cause severe corrosiveness to a stainless steel reactor. In this study two tasks were performed to convert glycerol to lactic acid with satisfactory conversion and …

Design And Cost Analysis Of A Citrus Orchard, Travis Cox

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Design, Construction And Evaluation Of An Automotive Bridge Jack, Thomas Gomes Jr.

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This Senior Project discusses the design, construction and evaluation of an automotive lift. This lift will be hydraulically powered with a 6000 lb lifting capacity. The lift constructed in this project will be installed within a current 4 post drive on vehicle lift and allows the user to lift one axle of a vehicle a few inches off the ramp of the drive on lift in order to remove the tires.

Development Of A Testing Procedure Using Cone Index To Allow For Optimal Tire Performance, Ryan Pehle

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This project discusses the design, fabrication, and evaluation of a Soil Cone Penetrometer that is to be used to test tracks designated for modified tractor pulling. The penetrometer measures the force required to penetrate a soil and provides a recommended tire pressure specific for the conditions present at the point in time

Design Of A Micro Irrigation System For An Almond Orchard, Adam Scheuber

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The owners of Scheuber Farms, a 1,000 acre row crop farming operation located in Patterson, California, wish to convert a 15-acre field into an almond orchard. For irrigating the trees, they would like to use a microsprayer irrigation system. The design I recommend and describe in this paper utilizes proper hydraulic analysis, and is based on the ability to supply enough water to match the amount of water required by the orchard during the peak month of an average year.

All of the major components and parameters of the microsprayer irrigation system were designed at minimal cost while ensuring that …

Investigation Of Ash Deposition During Co-Firing Biomass/Peat With Coal In A Pilot-Scale Fluidized-Bed Reactor, Yuanyuan Shao

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Biomass, a promising alternative to fossil fuels, has been applied widely for energy generation by co-firing technology in recent year particularly in the EU countries. In this thesis, a key issue of biomass co-firing technology - ash deposition in combustion, co-combustion and gasification, was comprehensively investigated in a pilot-scale bubbling fluidized bed reactor. A custom-designed, air-cooled probe was installed in the freeboard zone of the reactor to simulate the heat-transfer surface and collect ash deposits from the process. A local lignite coal, a woody biomass (white pine), and a Canadian peat were involved in the tests. The main varying operating …

Economic Analysis Of Reverse Osmosis Desalination Of Water For Agricultural Irrigation Applications, Ashley Hemping

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The combination of an ever-increasing population and a diminishing usable water supply threatens the sustainability of humanity’s existence on a global scale, especially in California, where agriculture is so integral to the state’s economy. Due to widespread recognition of this problem, there has been a growing trend in the development of alternative water resources, one of which involves the desalination of salt or brackish waters. Several different desalination technologies exist, including microfiltration, multi-stage flash, and multi-effect distillation.

This senior project investigates the economic viability of implementing reverse osmosis desalination for treatment of agricultural wastewater or other unusable water sources. These …

Pipeline Design For Reclaimed Spill Water For West Stanislaus Irrigation District, Daniel Bays

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The goal of this project was to design a pipeline that could be installed to replace an existing drain in West Stanislaus Irrigation District. The pipeline would give the district the ability to divert drain water back into their delivery system or send water down the existing drain.

The design attempted to use pipe and material the district already has and provided construction drawings and installation instructions for the construction of this design in the future.

Development Of A Semi-Automated Tobacco Stripping Machine Utilizing String Trimmers, Robert George Sperry

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Conventional stripping of burley tobacco is labor intensive and typically requires 50 to 75 worker hours per acre (wkr•hr/ac). The goal of the project was to reduce labor by optimizing leaf removal by string trimmer heads using combinations of strings lengths and motor speeds. In tests conducted on a single grade, all leaves outside the grade were removed by hand. Plants were run through the machine for sting lengths of 5, 7 and 9 inches and associated motor speeds which were monitored and recorded. Stripping efficiencies were calculated for each plant and collectively for each set of four plants. The …

Influence Of Fan Operation On Fan Assessment Numeration System (Fans) Test Results, Gabriela Munhoz Morello

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

The use of velocity traverses to measure in-situ air flow rate of ventilation fans can be subject to significant errors. The Fan Assessment Numeration System (FANS) was developed by the USD-ARS Southern Poultry Research Laboratory and refined at the University of Kentucky to measure air flow of fans in-situ. The procedures for using the FANS unit to test fans in-situ are not completely standardized. This study evaluated the effect of operating fan positions relative to the FANS unit for ten 1.22 m diameter fans in two types of poultry barns, with fans placed immediately next to each other and …

Particulate Organic Carbon Fate And Transport In A Lowland, Temperate Watershed, William Isaac Ford Iii

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Small lowland agricultural systems promote conditions where benthic biological communities can thrive. These biogeochemical processes have significant impacts on terrestrial ecosystem processes including POC flux and fate, nutrient balances, water quality budges, and aquatic biological functioning. Limited information is available on coupled biological and hydrologic processes in fluvial systems. This study investigates the mixture of biological and hydrologic processes in the benthic layer in order to understand POC cycling in the South Elkhorn system. Further, comprehensive modeling of POC flux in lowland systems has not been performed previously and the behavior of potentially controlling variables, such as hydrologic forcing and …

Design Of A Smart System For Monitoring Concrete Curing And Structural Health, William Quinn

Theses

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is a rapidly growing sector of the construction industry. Automated monitoring methods arc mainly limited to global monitoring and the application of local monitoring methods has not gained widespread application due to the fact that currently technology requires that the systems are wired to data acquisition devices. This thesis presents a fully embeddable wireless sensor node for the local monitoring of structural concrete. It presents the first reported wireless embedded system implementation of the electromechanical impedance method using both resonant and antiresonant sensors for this purpose.

The first section of this thesis examines the feasibility of …

Evaluating Algal Growth At Different Temperatures, Keelin Owen Cassidy

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

In recent years, there has been a concern for the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and how it will be captured. One way to capture carbon dioxide is with algae. In this study, algae's growth was measured at different temperatures. The first part of the study was to grow Scenedesmus and Chlorella with M8 or urea growth media at a temperature of 25, 30 or 35ºC. It was found that 30ºC had the best growth rates for both algae. The second part studied Scenedesmus growth with urea, more in-depth, and found the optimum growth temperature to be …

Mathematical Modeling Of Clostridium Thermocellum’S Metabolic Responses To Environmental Perturbation, Bless Adotey

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Clostridium thermocellum is a thermophilic anaerobe that is capable of producing ethanol directly from lignocellulosic compounds, however this organism suffers from low ethanol tolerance and low ethanol yields. In vivo mathematical modeling studies based on steady state traditional metabolic flux analysis, metabolic control analysis, transient and steady states’ flux spectrum analysis (FSA) were conducted on C. thermocellum’s central metabolism. The models were developed in Matrix Laboratory software ( MATLAB^® (The Language of Technical Computing), R2008b, Version 7.7.0.471)) based on known stoichiometry from C. thermocellum pathway and known physical constraints. Growth on cellobiose from Metabolic flux analysis (MFA) and Metabolic …

Optimization Of Coagulation And Syneresis Processes In Cheesemaking Using A Light Backscatter Sensor Technology, Tatiana Gravena Ferreira

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Curd syneresis, a critical step in cheesemaking, directly influences the quality of cheese. The syneresis process is empirically controlled in cheese manufacturing plants. A sensor technology for this step would improve process control and enhance cheese quality. A light backscatter sensor with a Large Field of View (LFV) was tested using a central composite design over a broad range of cheese process conditions including milk pH, calcium chloride addition level, milk fat to protein ratio, temperature, and a cutting time factor (β). The research objectives were to determine if the LFV sensor could monitor coagulation and syneresis steps …

Feasibility Of Wastewater Reuse For Fish Production In Small Communities In A Developing World Setting, Joshua James Girard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Eradicating poverty, malnutrition, and the burden of disease have been included as three of the major issues facing the world. The United Nation member countries, having set forth the Millennium Development Goals, have committed themselves to solving these problems. Two major factors which affect solutions to these problems are increasing water stress and implementing improved sanitation. Integration of tilapia aquaculture and reuse of wastewater has been suggested as a solution which addresses both of these factors. The objective of this study is to examine the feasibility, and explore the benefits and drawbacks, to implementing small community wastewater fed (WWF) aquaculture …