Thermodynamics Commons^™

Economic Feasibility Of Mixed Plastic Waste Pyrolysis Using Twin Reactor System In Northwest Arkansas, Carol Rogers, Patricia Means, Renato Gonzalez, Kaida Sheets, Hayden Townsend

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Plastic waste generation is increasing at an unsustainable rate while recycling solutions remain stagnant. As a chemical means of recycling, mixed plastic waste pyrolysis can generate synthetic oil appropriate for use as fuel in power generation from plastic waste that otherwise accumulates in landfills. With the scaling of a commercial plastic pyrolysis process in Northwest Arkansas (NWA) modeled after an operational sawdust pyrolysis unit in Huntsville, Arkansas, economic analysis resulted in 26.3% internal rate of return. Therefore, construction of a commercial mixed plastic-to-fuel pyrolysis plant is economically justified and should be pursued. To effectively implement the proposed design, NWA ...

Testing The Effectiveness Of Various Fabrics For Use In Protective Face Coverings, Isaac Daley

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Facemask requirements have been heavily implemented as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to test various fabrics that could be used in face coverings and determine which materials are best for reducing virus transmission rates. Of the seven fabrics tested, five were conventional home-use fabrics and the other two were surfaces modified with hydrophobic organosilanes. Wettability and droplet adherence tests were performed on each material. The materials that performed the best were decyltrichlorosilane (DTS) modified cotton, perfluorotrichlorosilane (FTS) modified cotton, and polyester. Contact angles for water droplets on these fabrics were 106°, 93°, and ...

Reduction Of Copper And Iron Oxide Mixture With Local Reducing Gases, Shokhrukh Khojiev

Acta of Turin Polytechnic University in Tashkent

The article analyzes the scientific problems of the copper industry. In particular, the main problem with the classical production of copper is the causes of large amounts of slag and the negative impact of these wastes on the environment. Accordingly, the main component that forms the slag is iron, and the higher its content in the original copper concentrate, the more slag is formed, and at the same time a large amount of copper metal is released into the waste. The departure is indicated by evidence. To prevent this problem, a technology has been proposed to reduce copper sulfide concentrates ...

A Parametric Analysis Of A Turbofan Engine With An Auxiliary Bypass Combustion Chamber – The Turboaux Engine, Kaleab Fetahi

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A parametric study of a novel turbofan engine with an auxiliary combustion chamber, nicknamed the TurboAux engine is presented. The TurboAux engine is conceived as an extension of a low-bypass turbofan engine with an auxiliary bypass annular combustion chamber around the core stream. The study presented in this thesis is motivated by the need to facilitate clean secondary burning of fuel at temperatures higher than conventionally realized, from air exiting the low-pressure compressor. The parametric study starts by analyzing the turbojet engine and its performance with and without an afterburner segment attached. Following that, the conventional turbofan and its mixing ...

Parametric Study Of Residual Stresses In Wire And Arc Additive Manufactured Parts, Hisham Khaled Jamil Abusalma

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) is a cost-effective additive manufacturing process due to its capability to fabricate large metal parts with high deposition rate and low equipment cost. Although this method is gaining popularity in manufacturing industry, more research is needed to understand process parameters’ effects on residual stress (RS) distribution and part distortion. As such, a 3D thermo-elastic-plastic transient model was established in ABAQUS and employed to investigate the effect of process parameters such as the torch speed, the deposition power and the interlayer dwell time on RS distribution and distortion in WAAM part. The numerical model utilized ...

Multiphase Equilibrium In A Novel Batch Dynamic Vl-Cell Unit With High Mixing: Apparatus Design And Process Simulation, Jeonghoon Kong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The availability of vapor pressure data is essential to validate thermodynamic models and enhance the thermodynamic correlations. Despite its importance, there is limited vapor pressure data of the multicomponent mixtures in open literature. This is the case for hydrocarbon/water blends as they are found in the naphtha recovery unit in the oil sand process.

This thesis uses a CREC-VL-Cell, a batch apparatus to measure the vapor pressures of n-octane/water, synthetic naphtha (SN)/water and solids/n-octane/water. The CREC-VL-Cell operates at thermal equilibrium with less than 1.6 % error using a 1080 rpm impeller speed and various optimized ...

Sequence Control Of Complex Coacervation, Li-Wei Chang

Doctoral Dissertations

Complex coacervation is a liquid-liquid phase separation driven by the complexation of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes. The resulting coacervate phase has been used for many applications, such as underwater adhesives, drug delivery, food and personal care products. There also has been increasing interest in coacervate-like droplets occurring in biological systems. The majority of these “membraneless organelles” involve a combination of intrinsically-disordered proteins and RNA, and phase separate due to long-range charge effects and short-range hydrophobic effects. While evolution has optimized the self-assembly of these types of biological polymers, our ability to design such materials remains limited, in part because the relevant ...

Kinetics Of The Crystal-Melt Phase Transformation In Semicrystalline Polymers, Kiran Subramaniam Iyer

Doctoral Dissertations

The assembly of long-chain polymers into an ordered state is a process that has puzzled polymer scientists for several decades. A process that is largely controlled by the strength of intermolecular attractions in small molecular systems, this crystallization in the case of polymers is controlled by a competition between the aforementioned force of attraction between monomers and the formidable conformational entropy of polymer chains. Any factor that affects this conformational entropy, whether that is an equilibrium thermodynamic factor or a kinetic factor, has the ability to control polymer crystallization. In this thesis, we focus on understanding the underlying kinetic processes ...

Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction For The Thermodynamics Of Small Clusters Of Particles, Aditya Dendukuri

Theses and Dissertations

This work employs tools and methods from computer science to study clusters comprising a small number N of interacting particles, which are of interest in science, engineering, and nanotechnology. Specifically, the thermodynamics of such clusters is studied using techniques from spectral graph theory (SGT) and machine learning (ML). SGT is used to define the structure of the clusters and ML is used on ensembles of cluster configurations to detect state variables that can be used to model the thermodynamic properties of the system. While the most fundamental description of a cluster is in 3N dimensions, i.e., the Cartesian coordinates ...

Comparative Analysis Of Simulation Models Of The Production Of Ethylbenzene, Osariemen Imafidon

Honors Theses

Process Engineering is all about making sure a raw material can become the desired product with as little variation as possible, while achieving the customer's specifications. Many equipment used for chemical processes cannot be physically inspected during operation at steady state, hence, the need for simulation software. The objective of this study was to compare the results of three different simulation packages to evaluate their efficacy within process design.

This study focused on the economic analysis of the production of Ethylbenzene using various models. The base case variables were inputted into each model to simulate the calculations for a ...

Improving Pv Module Efficiency Through Cooling, Blake Bradley

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Solarbacks researched and designed a variety of cooling methods that could be used to improve the efficiency of photovoltaics. These cooling methods can be separated into two categories: active and passive methods. The active cooling method of hydraulic cooling and the passive cooling methods of heat sinks (fins), optical coatings, thermosyphons, phase change materials, and thermoelectric generators were all taken into consideration as potential cooling methods. Passive cooling methods were preferred because the use of electricity required for the cooling mechanism would reduce the net electricity and subsequent profit from the panels.

Two variations of hydraulic cooling were researched ...

Numerical And Experimental Analysis Of Air-Cooled Condensers, Kaipo Kekaula

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The scope of this project is to numerically and experimentally dry cooling process in air-cooled condensers (ACCs) designed for concentrated solar power (CSP) applications. This effort is driven by the growing economic and political pressure to reduce water consumption during power generation due to limited water resources in the arid geographic climate of the southwestern United States. A computational approach is used in conjunction with experimental validation to gain a more complete understanding of these systems.

Traditionally research into ACCs have been largely limited to air-side heat transfer modelling as it accounts for a large portion of the total thermal ...

Improving Pv Module Efficiency Through Cooling, Brandon Conrad, Blake Bradley, Ashley Cox, Donhy Mai, Harrison Dawson, Megan Reynolds, George Hill

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Solarbacks researched and designed a variety of cooling methods that could be used to improve the efficiency of photovoltaics. These cooling methods can be separated into two categories: active and passive methods. The active cooling method of hydraulic cooling and the passive cooling methods of heat sinks (fins), optical coatings, thermosyphons, phase change materials, and thermoelectric generators were all taken into consideration as potential cooling methods. Passive cooling methods were preferred because the use of electricity required for the cooling mechanism would reduce the net electricity and subsequent profit from the panels.

Two variations of hydraulic cooling were researched ...

Solution To Exide Technologies Inbatec Inefficiency, Spencer Christian, Shixuan Hou, Mary Fairley, Reagan Gilker, Covenson Latouche

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The inefficiency of the battery charging time in Inbatec Units 1 and 2 in the Exide Technologies Fort Smith was initially investigated by a student team in Fall 2019, and the investigation was continued into Spring 2020. The Exide Technologies facility in Fort Smith, Arkansas utilizes 13 Inbatec units to charge the lead-acid batteries. The Inbatec systems circulate the sulfuric acid solution through a cooling tower to maintain to optimal charging temperature. Previous analysis of the charging process for Inbatec Units 1 and 2 show the cooling tower have the capacity to quickly remove the excess heat in the sulfuric ...

Solution To Exide Technologies Inbatec Inefficiency, Mary Fairley, Reagan Gilker, Spencer Christian, Shixuan Hou, Covenson Latouche

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The inefficiency of the battery charging time in Inbatec Units 1 and 2 in the Exide Technologies Fort Smith was initially investigated by a student team in Fall 2019, and the investigation was continued into Spring 2020. The Exide Technologies facility in Fort Smith, Arkansas utilizes 13 Inbatec units to charge the lead-acid batteries.

The Inbatec systems circulate the sulfuric acid solution through a cooling tower to maintain to optimal charging temperature. Previous analysis of the charging process for Inbatec Units 1 and 2 show the cooling tower have the capacity to quickly remove the excess heat in the sulfuric ...

Solution To Exide Technologies Inbatec Inefficiency, Shixuan Hou, Reagan Gilker, Mary Fairley, Spencer Christian, Covenson Latouche

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The inefficiency of the battery charging time in Inbatec Units 1 and 2 in the Exide Technologies Fort Smith was initially investigated by a student team in Fall 2019, and the investigation was continued into Spring 2020. The Exide Technologies facility in Fort Smith, Arkansas utilizes 13 Inbatec units to charge the lead-acid batteries. The Inbatec systems circulate the sulfuric acid solution through a cooling tower to maintain to optimal charging temperature. Previous analysis of the charging process for Inbatec Units 1 and 2 show the cooling tower have the capacity to quickly remove the excess heat in the sulfuric ...

The Effect Of Oxygen On Properties Of Zirconium Metal, Jie Zhao

Doctoral Dissertations

The influence of oxygen on the thermophysical properties of zirconium has been investigated using MSL-EML (Material Science Laboratory Electromagnetic Levitator) on ISS (International Space Station) in collaboration with NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), ESA (European Space Agency), and DLR (German Aerospace Center). Zirconium samples with different oxygen concentrations was subjected to multiple melt cycles during which the thermophysical properties, such as density, viscosity and surface tension, have been measured at various undercooled and superheated temperatures. Also, there are melt cycles for verifying the solidification mechanism. Similar samples were found to show anomalous nucleation of the solid for certain ranges ...

Electrification Of Domestic Hot Water To Aid The Integration Of Renewable Energy In The California Grid, Alejandro Cervantes

HSU theses and projects

Water heating in residential buildings, also known as domestic hot water (DHW), is the third largest use of energy after appliances and space conditioning. About 90% of the residential buildings in the state use natural gas fueled water heaters, 6% use electricity, and a small percent use liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or solar water heaters. The current energy use associated with residential water heating is small relative to the total amount of energy consumption in the residential building sector, but it is still a contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Improving hot water systems can be beneficial for bill customer ...

Energy Conservation And Heat Transfer Enhancement For Mixed Convection On The Vertical Galvanizing Furnace, Dan Mei, Yuzheng Zhu, Xuemei Xu, Futang Xing

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The alloying temperature is an important parameter that affects the properties of galvanized products. The objective of this study is to explore the mechanism of conjugate mixed convection in the vertical galvanizing furnace and propose a novel energy conservation method to improve the soaking zone temperature based on the flow pattern and heat transfer characteristics. Herein, the present study applied the k-ε two-equation turbulence model to enclose the Navier-Stokes fluid dynamic and energy conservation equations, and the temperature distributions of the steel plate and air-flow field in the furnace were obtained for six Richardson numbers between 1.91 ⋅ 10^{5 ...}

Coarse-Grained Dynamically Accurate Simulations Of Ionic Liquids At Vacuum-Interface, Tyler D. Stoffel

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

Ionic liquids, possessing improved properties in many areas of technical application, are excellent candidates as components in development of next-generation technology, including ultra-high energy batteries. If they are thus applied, however, extensive interfacial analysis of any selected ionic configuration will likely be required. Molecular dynamics (MD) provides an advantageous route by which this may be accomplished, but can fall short in observing some phenomena only present at larger time/length scales than it can simulate. Often times this is approached by coarse-graining (CG), with which scope of simulation can be significantly increased. However, coarse-grained MD systems are generally known to ...