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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Veloelectric: Creating A Device That Harvests Energy From Bicycles, Austin Hall, Daniel Stohr, Tj Fox
Veloelectric: Creating A Device That Harvests Energy From Bicycles, Austin Hall, Daniel Stohr, Tj Fox
Mechanical Engineering
Long distance mountain bikers, bike-packers, and many bikers in developing countries rely on electrical devices for safety and communication. These specific groups of people operate in areas with little to no electricity, and often times have no power to sustain their devices. The purpose of this Cal Poly senior project, VeloElectric, was to design, build, and test a kinetic energy harvester for bicycles that can be used to charge common mobile devices via USB. This senior project team created a device that attaches directly to a bicycle and uses vibrations to generate energy, which in turn powers a variety of …
The Battery Charging Hand-Powered Washing Machine “Project Uwash”, Catherine Victoria Kennedy
The Battery Charging Hand-Powered Washing Machine “Project Uwash”, Catherine Victoria Kennedy
Honors Theses
Project UWash consists of converting the mechanical energy that goes into hand washing laundry into usable electricity. Our proof-of-concept system is composed of: an energy source (salad spinner), an energy harvester (AC generator), a regulating circuit (voltage regulator), a storage component (lithium ion batteries), and an application (charging an iPhone and USB based LED flashlight). The goal is to fully charge the LED flashlight after a one hour use and charge an iPhone to at least 50% after a 6 hour use. We were able to fully charge the flashlight in about 15 minutes but were only able to charge …
Electrical Characterization Of Nanomaterials, Chase Martin
Electrical Characterization Of Nanomaterials, Chase Martin
Honors Theses
Our dependence on energy sources and depleting fossil fuel reserves are forcing the world to look for efficient and renewable sources of energy. Current renewable technology lacks the efficiency and storage capability necessary to continue our heavy reliance on energy. This project focuses on understanding the physical and electrical properties of nanomaterials for their use as super capacitors and as photovoltaic cells. Using multiple microscopy techniques on the Cascade Probe Station and Veeco Dimension V Atomic Force Microscope, local and bulk conductivity measurements were performed on Laponite RD infused polyaniline (PANI) samples synthesized by Union College Chemistry Department Students. Four …
Control Of Modular Multilevel Converters For Grid Integration Of Full-Scale Wind Energy Conversion Systems, Suman Debnath
Control Of Modular Multilevel Converters For Grid Integration Of Full-Scale Wind Energy Conversion Systems, Suman Debnath
Open Access Dissertations
The growing demand for wind power generation has pushed the capacity of wind turbines towards MW power levels. Higher capacity of the wind turbines necessitates operation of the generators and power electronic conversion systems at higher voltage/power levels. The power electronic conversion system of a wind energy conversion system (WECS) needs to meet the stringent requirements in terms of reliability, efficiency, scalability and ease of maintenance, power quality, and dv/dt stress on the generator/transformer. Although the multilevel converters including the neutral point clamped (NPC) converter and the active NPC converter meet most of the requirements, they fall short in reliability …
Overcoming Fundamental Barriers In Photovoltaic And Terahertz Generation, Chao Zhou
Overcoming Fundamental Barriers In Photovoltaic And Terahertz Generation, Chao Zhou
Open Access Theses
Several fundamental barriers limit the performance of opto-electronic conversion processes below 100%. Two specific examples of current technological interest include photovoltaic conversion of sunlight into electricity (i.e., solar cells), and terahertz generation from optical sources. In particular, solar cells are limited not only by the Carnot limit associated with the second law (approximately 86% at room temperature), but also by radiative recombination, non-reciprocity, carrier thermalization, and sub-bandgap losses. In the case of terahertz generation, the typical process of difference frequency generation relies on two input optical waves with only a small difference between them to generate the desired output; however, …
Data Cleaning In The Energy Domain, Hermine Nathalie Akouemo Kengmo Kenfack
Data Cleaning In The Energy Domain, Hermine Nathalie Akouemo Kengmo Kenfack
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation addresses the problem of data cleaning in the energy domain, especially for natural gas and electric time series. The detection and imputation of anomalies improves the performance of forecasting models necessary to lower purchasing and storage costs for utilities and plan for peak energy loads or distribution shortages. There are various types of anomalies, each induced by diverse causes and sources depending on the field of study. The definition of false positives also depends on the context. The analysis is focused on energy data because of the availability of data and information to make a theoretical and practical …