Engineering Commons^™

Spectroscopic Investigation Of The Chemical And Electronic Properties Of Chalcogenide Materials For Thin-Film Optoelectronic Devices, Kimberly Horsley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Chalcogen-based materials are at the forefront of technologies for sustainable energy production. This progress has come only from decades of research, and further investigation is needed to continue improvement of these materials.

For this dissertation, a number of chalcogenide systems were studied, which have applications in optoelectronic devices, such as LEDs and Photovoltaics. The systems studied include Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGSe) and CuInSe2 (CISe) thin-film absorbers, CdTe-based photovoltaic structures, and CdTe-ZnO nanocomposite materials. For each project, a sample set was prepared through collaboration with outside institutions, and a suite of spectroscopy techniques was employed to answer specific questions about the system. These …

Development Of A Black-Box Transient Thermal Model For Residential Buildings, Andrew Cross

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Heavily populated metropolitan areas located in cooling-dominated climates, as are found in the Desert Southwest, pose a challenge to electrical utilities that service these areas. During the late afternoons of the summer months, residents of these metropolitan areas require larger than normal amounts of power to run their homes' air conditioning systems, at significant expense to the utilities. In the study reported here, interior temperature and power consumption data, accumulated over the course of a year and a half from seven houses within a Las Vegas neighborhood, are used to develop a predictive black-box statistical model for residential thermal transience. …

Power Optimization, Diagnostic Monitoring, And Modeling Of Photovoltaic System, Khalid Hurayb

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Photovoltaic (PV) solar energy has been sustaining a major growth rate over the last decade in many parts of the world. This steep growth has been driven by concern about climate change, the adoption of renewable portfolio standards, government incentives, and reduction in PV system costs. Recently, however, such large PV penetration into the electrical grid is cause a concern that might curb such a growth; namely, the incontrollable intermittency of power generated on cloudy days. Furthermore, conventional PV system configurations often do not harness the maximum power that is available under partial shading caused by clouds or shadows of …

Study Of Water Transport Phenomena On Cathode Of Pemfcs Using Monte Carlo Simulation, Karn Soontrapa

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation deals with the development of a three-dimensional computational model of water transport phenomena in the cathode catalyst layer (CCL) of PEMFCs. The catalyst layer in the numerical simulation was developed using the optimized sphere packing algorithm. The optimization technique named the adaptive random search technique (ARSET) was employed in this packing algorithm. The ARSET algorithm will generate the initial location of spheres and allow them to move in the random direction with the variable moving distance, randomly selected from the sampling range, based on the Lennard-jones potential of the current and new configuration. The solid fraction values obtained …

Post-Occupancy Energy Efficiency Evaluation Of A Leed Platinum Federal Government Facility, Theresa Tincher

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to gain a comprehensive understanding of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) certification system and its relevance to Federal policies, building codes, and building standards, develop experience with whole building energy modeling, and determine the actual post-occupancy energy usage as compared with developed model and design projections. This thesis hypothesized the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED rating system compared favorably to other policies, codes, and standards in use at the time, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamations' LEED Platinum Lower Colorado Regional Office Green Building (LCROGB), located in Boulder City, Nevada, operated …