Engineering Commons^™

Accelerated Construction Of Roadways: Life Cycle Assessment And Environmental Impacts, Sudipta Ghorai

Dissertations - ALL

Sustainability refers to a long-term perspective of economic, social, and environmental progress, which not only addresses the present conditions but also includes the needs of future generations. The massive network of roadways in United States has the potential to contribute considerably towards achieving sustainability in the infrastructure sector. The “triple bottom line” of sustainability, if incorporated in roadway development projects, can address issues like climate change, environmental protection, funds optimization, and social equity. This study focuses on the life cycle assessment (LCA) of arterial improvement projects. Preservation treatments help in extending the remaining service life of roads; but at the …

How Are We Being Informed About Climate Change?, Elisa Perpignan, Oluwasegun O. Seriki, Rollis Jiofack, Derrick Agyapong

Conference papers

Scientific poster ‘How is Europe being informed about Climate Change?’ This poster was presented as part of the research results that have been delivered on behalf of the Women Partnership for the 'Climate change, migration & me Challenge' which was organised part of the Young Water Professional program of the Amsterdam International Water Week.

The poster won the second prize with the team comprising Elisa Perpignan, Derrick Agyapong, Rollis Jiofack, Oluwasegun Seriki (participating online out of respectively Ghana, Burkina Faso and Ireland), from the case: European Pact for Water. The team was selected to attend the Planetary Security Conference – …

A Comparative Investigation Of Industry, Academics' And Students' Perceptions On Essential Sustainability Knowledge, Competencies And Skills, Lloyd Scott

Conference papers

Design and construction educational programmes offered throughout the world play a vital role in sustainability education by producing professionals knowledgeable and competent in sustainable practices. It is extremely important to align the sustainability knowledge of the graduates to the industry expectations. This paper compares industry expectations about essential sustainability knowledge with both academics and students perceptions of requisite knowledge about sustainability. A three stage mixed research approach was adopted for the study. Essential sustainability knowledge expected from recent graduates was identified through literature review and surveys of architectural design and construction firms. Students enrolled in architecture and construction programmes were …

Best Management Practices: A Community-Based Approach To Construction And Installation, Nathanael J. La Breche

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The Wabash River Enhancement Corporation (WREC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving both the health of the Wabash River and the surrounding terrestrial areas. In an effort to improve water quality, their urban cost-share program focuses on supporting green projects within a critical region surrounding the Great Bend of the Wabash River. In this essay, a Purdue student describes his experience as leader of a six-member group who worked with WREC to locate a suitable site within this critical area and implement a green project. They selected the Lighthouse Baptist Church, located in Lafayette, Indiana, since it was experiencing …

Static And Dynamic Properties Of Controlled Low-Strength Materials Incorporating Treated Oil Sands Waste, Ahmed Mneina

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Controlled Low-Strength Materials (CLSM) is a self-compacted self-leveling cementitious material with compressive strength of 8.3 MPa or less. It is used as an alternative of soil backfill materials in geotechnical and infrastructure applications. This study investigates the effects of incorporating treated oil sand wastes (TOSW) as a partial replacement of sand or fly ash on fresh and hardened properties of CLSM. In addition, the environmental impact of the proposed new mixtures was evaluated. The results show that CLSM mixtures incorporating TOSW had satisfied the limits and requirements of ACI committee 229 for CLSM with no environmental hazards. The incorporation of …

Metabolic Comparison Of Wild-Type And Transgenic Synechocystis Pcc 6803 Cyanobacteria, Ian A. Mcluckey, John A. Morgan, Joel Yu King Hing

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The Calvin-Benson (CBB) cycle is an essential part of nature. This phenomenon allows carbon molecules in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to be converted into useful energy in the form of sugars. Cyanobacteria are single-celled organisms capable of utilizing energy from sunlight to drive this cycle and are also readily engineered. In hopes of improving this cycle, we compared a wild-type version of the Synechocystis PCC6803 cyanobacteria to an engineered version overexpressing the enzyme FBA (fructose-biphosphate aldolase), called 70 glpX, to deduce how the overexpressing strain is able to be more photosynthetically efficient. To do this, comparative metabolomics were done …

Characterization Of High Oleic Acid Biodiesel: Improving Biofuel Properties, James M. Muskat, Nathan Mosier

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In 2016, the world produced an amount of biofuel equivalent to 82,306,000 tonnes of oil. A portion of the biofuels produced was categorized as biodiesel. While still growing as a fuel alternative, current biodiesel fuels are at risk for causing increased engine coking, lower engine performance and durability, oil ring sticking, carbon deposits, and gelling of lubricating oil. Due to these primary issues, biodiesel cannot completely replace petroleum diesel as a fuel source. Instead, biodiesel is commonly blended with petroleum diesel at 5% and 20% (B5 and B20) in the U.S. to create a mixture that has acceptable fuel properties. …

Integrating Disparate Nuclear Data Sources For Improved Predictive Maintenance Modeling: Maintenance-Based Prognostics For Long-Term Equipment Operation, Zachary Allen Welz

Doctoral Dissertations

The United States (US) nuclear industry is one of the most heavily regulated businesses in the world, creating a culture of world-class design, operation, and maintenance. In an article published on modern maintenance technologies, Terrence OHanlon (past Chief Asset Manager for Reliabilityweb.com) stated, “world class companies often devote up to 50 percent of their entire maintenance resources to condition based monitoring and the planned work that is required as a result of the findings” [1]. One would expect US nuclear power plants to constantly upgrade, improve, and expand their operations and maintenance departments and tactics. Since the early 1990s, US …

A Comparative Analysis Of Feed And Environmental Factors On Broiler Growth In The United States, Alexandra Gulli

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Broiler production in the United States has become an important industry within the last half century. As the demand for poultry continues to increase and the concern of climate change also increases, it will become an important part of the industry to become more sustainable. This study uses a feed optimization model, a broiler growth model, and a life cycle assessment (LCA) to determine how feed ingredients and the barn environment can affect the broiler’s growth and production emissions. A multi-criteria ration optimization model is used to produce feeds based on carbon footprint and cost. A growth model is used …

Modeling The Economic And Environmental Performance Of Offshore Wind Energy, Alexana Cranmer

Doctoral Dissertations

Offshore wind is a growing source of energy globally. Like any energy technology, it has impacts on the environment. In the case of renewable energy, we need a way to consider the environmental benefits as well as the environmental costs. This dissertation develops a set of models to examine the economic and environmental costs and benefits and the trade-offs between them. We ask how much offshore wind energy should be sited, and where should that offshore wind energy be located? The first model estimates the economic impact of wake interactions between wind farms. Wind farm sites are chosen through a …

Multi-Criteria Decision Making When Planning Sustainable Multimodal Transportation Routes In A Linear Corridor, Marie Louis

Doctoral Dissertations

In urban and suburban locations, public transit can be seen as an effective mode of daily transportation. The majority of the time, travelers would seek the cheapest, shortest, and possibly most eco-friendly means of transit. When designing public transit network systems, transportation planners and decision-makers, with input from stakeholders, should strive to optimize transportation services to meet the needs of the population most efficiently and at the lowest cost, that is, providing a transportation system that s the three E's of the sustainability concept: environment, social equity, and economic. Previous studies have focused on sustainability as the primary concern in …

Kettle Cooling And Sustainability Project, Nico Degiorgio

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

A particular frozen food processing facility uses a once-through cooling process to bring their kettle-cooked product’s temperature down from nearly boiling temperatures to the eighty degree Fahrenheit range. This process is water intensive and facility managers are seeking to reduce their potable water consumption. Sales engineers from Air Treatment Corporation, an HVAC&R manufacturers’ rep, initiated a number of meetings to propose heat rejection solutions and illustrate their associated payback potentials.

This report contains methods of analyzing a food production process, the technical sales process, thermodynamic principles, refrigeration technologies, and the application of technical knowledge to provide a long-term, system solution. …

Adaptive Light Dimmer, Jonathan Sato, William Xiong

Electrical Engineering

This project, the Adaptive Light Dimmer for the DC House, senses a room's light content and adjusts a lamp's light intensity accordingly, thus regulating the room's light content. The device is designed to work with renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy. This would be useful in less developed countries where AC electricity is not well spread and renewable DC, such as solar, can be better utilized. It functions by using the TSL2561 light sensor to sense light, ATTiny85 microcontroller to output PWM to the LED driver, LT3795 LED driver to output current to an LED and LT3014 …

Dc-Dc Converter Control System For The Energy Harvesting From Exercise Machines System, Alexander Sireci

Master's Theses

Current exercise machines create resistance to motion and dissipate energy as heat. Some companies create ways to harness this energy, but not cost-effectively. The Energy Harvesting from Exercise Machines (EHFEM) project reduces the cost of harnessing the renewable energy. The system architecture includes the elliptical exercise machines outputting power to DC-DC converters, which then connects to the microinverters. All microinverter outputs tie together and then connect to the grid. The control system, placed around the DC-DC converters, quickly detects changes in current, and limits the current to prevent the DC-DC converters and microinverters from entering failure states.

An artificial neural …

Implementing Net Zero Energy Into The Construction Innovations Center, Marlo Arleen Castro

Construction Management

As the environmental status of our planet declines, it is becoming more and more important for the construction industry to adapt. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is becoming an unspoken requirement for all new and tenant improvement construction, and now, with the goal of Net Zero Energy (NZE) for all new commercial buildings by 2030, NZE is becoming the way of the future. As of late, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) has made grand efforts to retrofit several of the older buildings on its campus in order to achieve LEED certification. One of …

Nuclear Insurance Subsidies Cost From Post-Fukushima Accounting Based On Media Sources, John Laureto, Joshua M. Pearce

Joshua M. Pearce

Quantification of nuclear liability insurance is difficult without arbitrary liability caps; however, post-mortem calculations can be used to calculate insurance costs. This study analyzes the Fukushima (Daiichi) nuclear power plant disaster to quantify the cost per unit electricity ($/kWh) of nuclear energy from the lifetime of the plant after accounting for the true cost of the liability needed to cover the damages from the nuclear disaster determined from news reports. These costs are then compared to the cost of electricity currently paid by Japanese consumers, and then are aggregated to determine the indirect subsidy for nuclear power providers in both …

Living Tiny Legally, James G. Rollin

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Over the last 40 years, the average new United States house has increased in size by more than 1,000 square feet, from an average size of 1,660 square feet in 1973 (earliest year available from the Census Bureau) to 2,687 square feet last year (Perry, 2016). In that same time period, there was a 91% increase in home square footage per inhabitant and a decrease in average household size. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average home in the United States costs approximately $358,000 to build, an increase of roughly $200,000 since 1998. Meanwhile, the average annual income in …

Do Single-Use Medical Devices Containing Biopolymers Reduce The Environmental Impacts Of Surgical Procedures Compared With Their Plastic Equivalents?, Scott R. Unger, Troy A. Hottle, Shakira R. Hobbs, Cassandra L. Thiel, Nicole Campion, Melissa M. Bilec, Amy E. Landis

Publications

Background: While petroleum-based plastics are extensively used in health care, recent developments in biopolymer manufacturing have created new opportunities for increased integration of biopolymers into medical products, devices and services. This study compared the environmental impacts of single-use disposable devices with increased biopolymer content versus typically manufactured devices in hysterectomy.

Methods: A comparative life cycle assessment of single-use disposable medical products containing plastic(s) versus the same single-use medical devices with biopolymers substituted for plastic(s) at Magee-Women’s Hospital (Magee) in Pittsburgh, PA and the products used in four types of hysterectomies that contained plastics potentially suitable for biopolymer substitution. Magee is …

Compiled Research & Materials, Andrew Tarutani, Madalyn Beban, Laura Kunas, Colin Joern, Conor Mcgrail

Sustainability and Energy

This document outlines the research conducted and progress made over the Spring 2017 semester. It details the team's efforts to pursue implementation of a solar co-op in the McPherson Town neighborhood along with an innovative tiny homes neighborhood on the University of Dayton's campus.

A Data-Driven Approach For Benchmarking Energy Efficiency Of Warehouse Buildings, Wee Leong Lee, Kar Way Tan, Zui Young Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study proposes adata-driven approach for benchmarking energy efficiency of warehouse buildings.Our proposed approach provides an alternative to the limitation of existingbenchmarking approaches where a theoretical energy-efficient warehouse was usedas a reference. Our approach starts by defining the questions needed to capturethe characteristics of warehouses relating to energy consumption. Using an existingdata set of warehouse building containing various attributes, we first cluster theminto groups by their characteristics. The warehouses characteristics derivedfrom the cluster assignments along with their past annual energy consumptionare subsequently used to train a decision tree model. The decision tree providesa classification of what factors contribute to different …

Development And Degradation Analysis Of Novel Micro And Nanostructured Transition Metal Oxide (Tmo) Anodes For Aqueous Sodium Ion Batteries., Santanu Mukherjee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One of the primary motivations driving battery technology research is the need to develop cleaner and more efficient energy storage systems. The portable electronics industry has developed exponentially, especially over the last couple of decades and therefore the importance of efficient electrochemical energy storage systems cannot be overstated. Li-ion batteries have been the predominant rechargeable energy in use, however, they have their own particular drawbacks viz. flammability of the electrolyte, expensive mining of the Li metal etc. This is where the importance of Na-ion batteries lie. This research focuses on using existing transition metal oxides (TMOs) and tuning their crystal …

A Tool To Evaluate Sustainability Of Pavement Maintenance Projects., Yibo Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pavement maintenance activities are widely regarded to be critical elements during pavement life cycle, different maintenance techniques have been used to restore or extend the service lives of pavements. However, the existing maintenance practices on pavement system have problems that impair the economic benefits, disturb the natural environment, and somewhat ignore the needs from stakeholders. To minimize these negative impacts, sustainability is an ideal way because it addresses the problems under Triple Bottom Line (TBL, refers to economy, environment, and society). Sustainability analysis within transportation or pavement industry has been studied in different countries, but the concept of sustainable pavement …

Optimization Of Roadway Electrification Integrating Wireless Power Transfer: Technoeconomic Assessment And Lifecycle Analysis, Braden J. Limb

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Electric vehicles are the main technology currently being pursued to reduce dependence on fossil fuels in the transportation sector. These vehicles provide both reduced greenhouse gas emissions and decreased operating costs when compared to conventional internal combustion vehicles, while providing the flexibility to use both renewable and fossil energy. However, these vehicles have seen limited consumer adoption due to their large purchase prices and limited driving range. Both purchase price and driving range are related to the large onboard battery systems required for electric vehicle travel.

One solution to decrease dependence on large battery systems has focused on charging vehicles …

Next Steps For Mentoring Program, Patrick Gray

Sustainability and Connectivity

This file provides a jump-off position for students in the fall 2017 semester who want to continue work toward a mentoring program.

Mentoring Brochure: Longer Version, Tim Leonard, Abigail Lisjak, Adam Foster

Sustainability and Connectivity

This is a mentoring brochure we created to show different organizations our ideas. This is the longer of two versions.

Mentoring Brochure: Shorter Version, Tim Leonard, Abigail Lisjak, Adam Foster

Sustainability and Connectivity

We made these brochures to talk to different organizations about our thoughts and ideas. There are two iterations of this. This one has less words.

Dayton Regional Green Meeting Notes, Tim Leonard, Adam Foster, Abigail Lisjak

Sustainability and Connectivity

These are notes from our meeting with Lamees Mubaslat from Dayton Regional Green. She is really excited about more mentoring programs in Dayton.

Development Of A Lightweight Hurricane-Resistant Roof System, Ehssan Amir Sayyafi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Roofs are the most vulnerable part of the building envelope that often get damaged when subjected to hurricane winds. Damage to the roofs has a devastating impact on the entire structure, including interior losses and service interruptions. This study aimed at the development of a novel light-weight composite flat roof system for industrial, commercial and multi-story residential buildings to withstand Category 5 hurricane wind effects based on the Florida Building Code requirements for hurricane-prone regions, the strictest wind design code in the United States.

The proposed roof system is designed as a combination of two advanced materials: ultra-high performance concrete …

Light Olefin Production By Cracking Nannochloris Oculata Microalgae Using Aluminosilicate Catalysts, Gaurav Goyal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The global demand and sustainability concerns for producing light olefins encouraged researchers to look for an alternative and sustainable feedstock. Alkenes, such as ethene, propene and butene, are known as light olefins. Olefins are the backbone of the chemical industry because they serve as the chemical building blocks for the manufacture of polymers, fibers, and numerous organic chemicals. Feedstocks such as naphtha, natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) are currently used for producing light olefins, but they are non-renewable and hence unsustainable. In contrast, biomass as a potential feedstock for the production of fuels and chemicals is renewable. Microalgae, …

Investigation Into Feasibility Of Off-Grid Small Dwelling In Slo County, Sam Labberton

Construction Management

The trend towards green, sustainable living has grown more and more in the housing industry each year since before the turn of the century; solar in the last decade alone has grown by 60% (http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-industry-data). Living on a grid that runs on unclean sources of energy already has led us into an environmental disaster some call irreversible. This paper takes a detailed look into the feasibility of a small, off-grid, dwelling that utilizes modern technology in order to live more modestly. In conjunction with great advancements in solar technology along with energy storage such as deep cycle lead-acid batteries, on-site …