Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Fabrication Of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Components Using Stereolithography 3d Printing, Hannah Dyer

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Transitioning from fossil fuel supplied energy to renewable technology must meet cost efficient parameters throughout the manufacturing process while possessing the characteristics of a functioning and reliable power source. With a significant demand in renewable energy products, developmental techniques require adaptive approaches and procedures for novel materials in the manufacturing phase. This report proposes how a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), a renewable energy system, can employ additive manufacturing for directly 3D printing its components by utilizing stereolithography (SLA) 3D printing techniques. Fabrication of the printed components from the mixtures were first mixed with varying concentrations of ceramic powder and …

Elevation-Distributed Multistage Reverse Osmosis Desalination With Seawater Pumped Storage, Hani E. Elsayed-Ali

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

A seawater reverse osmosis (RO) plant layout based on multistage RO with stages located at different elevations above sea level is described. The plant uses the weight of a seawater column from pumped storage as head pressure for RO (gravity-driven multistage RO) or to supplement high-pressure pumps used in RO (gravity-assisted multistage RO). The use of gravitational force reduces the specific energy for RO compared to using high-pressure pumps. By locating the RO stages at different elevations based on demand sites, the total specific energy consumption for RO and permeate transport to different elevations above sea level is reduced from …

Single-Stage, Venturi-Driven Desalination System, Brandon Proetto

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Water demand is increasing at a rapid pace due to population increase, industrial expansion, and agricultural development. The use of desalination technology to meet the high water demands has increased global online desalination capacity from 47 million m^3/d in 2007 to 92.5 million m^3/d as of June 2017 [49]. Membrane and thermal processes are the two mainstream desalination categories used worldwide for desalination plants. Reverse Osmosis (RO) is the most widely used membrane process and it has become the dominant technology for building desalination plants over recent decades. Thermal distillation, however, has become less and less competitive due to its …

Offshore Wind Energy: Simulating Local Offshore Wind Turbine, Ian P. Aquino

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Dominion Virginia Energy is looking at the possible creation of an offshore wind plant as a renewable source of electricity to be located off the coast of Virginia Beach. This thesis reports on a computer simulation based on local wind conditions and possible single wind turbine installation.

The National Buoy Data Center keeps records of the local wind conditions gathered in real time and available to the public. These data give a general overview of the wind conditions in Virginia Beach which is used to simulate atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) flow conditions and is subsequently used as input data for …

Ridding Ships' Ballast Water Of Microorganisms, Fred C. Dobbs, Andrew Rogerson

OES Faculty Publications

( First paragraph) A complex assemblage of microorganisms exists in nearly every aquatic system on earth. In lakes and oceans, every milliliter of water contains about 10² protists (single-celled eukaryotes), 10⁶ bacteria, and 10⁷–10⁹ viruses. Therefore, billions of microorganisms inevitably enter ships’ ballast tanks during normal operations. It has been argued that microorganisms must certainly be frequent invaders of coastal ecosystems, given the high densities of bacteria and viruses in ballast water—10⁸ and 10⁹ organisms per liter, respectively (1)—their potentially high reproductive rates, broad tolerances to physical conditions, and ability to form resting …