Engineering Commons^™

Eco: A Sustainability Education Chatbot, Joey Gruber

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

There is a lack of access to information about sustainability from what the climate crisis is to how to recycle properly. For both sustainability-informed and uninformed individuals, learning new information about sustainability and reducing their waste in a way that compliments their lifestyle is time-consuming, requires strategic skills, and can cost them money. ECO is an audio and text-based chatbot that teaches users to be more environmentally conscious through waste reduction.

Electrochromic Windows: Return On Investment Analysis, Thomas Michael Caprio

Construction Management

In recent years, sustainability in construction has become a topic of undeniable interest. With sustainability certifications becoming more prominent and desirable, members of the construction industry have begun to seek alternatives for standard systems to keep up with market trends. One of the main issues that the construction industry faces is accessibility of technology. While there are new products and technologies being released frequently, members of the construction industry lack knowledge on the specific details and implications of working with newer systems. One piece of technology that was recently introduced is electrochromic glass, or smart glass. Electrochromic windows analyze sunlight …

Sustainability In Web Development Through Energy Efficiency, Hannah Bebinger

Honors Projects

As global internet usage expands, websites are growing in both size and complexity. Contrary to the common belief that the internet is immaterial and “environmentally friendly”, web pages have significant negative environmental impacts (Frick, 2015). Websites contribute to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and electricity consumption. Considering the current climate crisis, it is crucial that web developers be aware of the impact that their work has on the environment and actively work to improve site energy efficiency. With a lack of regulation and awareness, the environmental impact of websites has remained unchecked despite growing concerns for sustainability. Further research and …

Evaluating Groundwater Storage Change And Recharge Using Grace Data: A Case Study Of Aquifers In Niger, West Africa, Sergio A. Barbosa, Sarva T. Pulla, Gustavious P. Williams, Norman L. Jones, Bako Mamane, Jorge L. Sanchez

Faculty and Student Publications

Accurately assessing groundwater storage changes in Niger is critical for long-term water resource management but is difficult due to sparse field data. We present a study of groundwater storage changes and recharge in Southern Niger, computed using data from NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. We compute a groundwater storage anomaly estimate by subtracting the surface water anomaly provided by the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) model from the GRACE total water storage anomaly. We use a statistical model to fill gaps in the GRACE data. We analyze the time period from 2002 to 2021, which corresponds …

A Study Of The Integration Of Environment, Social, And Governance Policy In The Mining Industry, Ryan Isto

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

In a push to reach more responsible and sustainable business practices, extractive resource industries like the mining and oil industry have faced increasing pressures to update their policies to reflect the global trend of improving environmental and social responsibility. Industries have adopted numerous corporate social responsibility (CSR) frameworks to shape policies to improve sustainability, mitigate risk, and increase marketability. A CSR that has become increasingly relevant within the mining industry is the use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) to influence sustainability policy. Mining companies have adopted ESG as a method to influence their corporate policy to manage public relations, …

Chemical Thermodynamics—A Practical Wonderland, Rubin Battino, Trevor M. Letcher

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Chemical thermodynamics is frequently thought of as being a hard subject and quite abstract. In fact, it is one of the most practical of subjects when you consider that the field of chemical engineering (responsible for endless useful applications) is effectively applied chemical thermodynamics. In this essay, examples of these applications are given, especially with respect to sustainability. The essay first considers the limits of thermodynamics and the constraints put on it in terms of the rigorous definitions of the principal function’s energy, entropy, and Gibbs energy.

Living Off The Grid With Renewable Energy: A Case Study, Jake Reid O'Balle

Construction Management

The trend towards green, sustainable living is on the rise and the benefits are continuing to make noise in the world of homeowners. In this project, the benefits of renewable energy and consumer preferences were analyzed and applied to off-grid living in the form of a case study. It was found that the majority of homebuyers are concerned about the environment and wanted an environmentally friendly home but are not willing to pay more in order to achieve these desires. This information spurred the need for a detailed assessment of the feasibility of sustainable off-grid living. After conducting extensive research, …

Sustainability Within Asphalt And Concrete Paving Systems, Matthew Clapp

Construction Management

The construction industry is continually determining ways to make the building process more streamlined, cost efficient and, more recently, sustainable. As the commercial construction industry becomes more structured, industry leaders are looking for new ways to make installation of materials and cleanup more environmentally friendly. Construction is responsible for a large portion of the overall harm toward the environment. Although the commercial sector has made great strides toward this effort in the last fifty years with programs such as LEED, there is still much to be taken into consideration. The goal of this research is to analyze the current trends …

Proposal For Adobe Earthbag Disaster-Relief Structure, John Camacho

Construction Management

The science behind creating an adobe house has been around for thousands of years; the primitive mixture contains only dirt, water, and straw. Left to cure in bricks or as a single cast-in-place system, the structure will provide long-lasting protection from the elements. Science has taken this a step further with the introduction of cementitious admixtures and reinforcement. The result is an adobe structure with exemplary thermo-retentive properties and load-bearing capabilities. This project provides an analysis on the “SuperAdobe” earthbag system that has been put into practice by independent contractors and housing-relief initiatives. The goal of the project was to …

Sustainable Building Techniques In Levi’S Stadium: A Case Study, Sean Zweigle

Construction Management

This study aimed to analyze the sustainability of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California through an analysis of its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED certification. Levi’s Stadium was the first professional sports stadium to receive LEED Gold certification in 2014, at a time where a focus on green building practices was becoming an industry standard. This analysis aims to determine what avenues the project team employed to ensure certification, including various standout features and strategies. Additionally, the study investigates the scorecard used to award points towards LEED certification, highlighting categories emphasized in design and construction and those …

Plant Protein-Based Food Packaging Films; Recent Advances In Fabrication, Characterization, And Applications, Milad Hadidi, Shima Jafarzadeh, Mehrdad Forough, Farhad Garavand, Saeid Alizadeh, Ali Salehabadi, Amin Mousavi Khaneghah, Seid Mahdi Jafari

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Background: Plant-based proteins as an alternative to synthetic polymers have attracted the interest of the global packaging industry in the last decade due to their biodegradability, sustainability, environmental, and beneficial health claims.

Scope and approach: This review covers the recent developments in biodegradable packaging such as edible films/coatings and innovative packaging materials based on plant protein sources. The importance, sources, and techno-functional properties of plant-derived proteins for food packaging are discussed. The impact of different additives on the functionality of plant protein-based biodegradable materials is also investigated. In addition, plant protein-based packaging characteristics and their application in food are also …

Strategic Energy Master Planning For Carbon Neutrality, Marie Patterson

CSU Journal of Sustainability and Climate Change

Universities across the United States are generating goals to be more sustainable and carbon neutral. The energy used in existing buildings on campuses amount to a large volume of greenhouse emissions and must be reduced to help achieve neutrality goals. Strategic Energy Master Plans are instrumental to support these goals through the development of recommendations to reduce energy. Calculating the energy use intensity for existing buildings, a main component of a Strategic Energy Master Plan, can help the campus understand where energy is being used the most. With this information the highest energy consuming buildings can be the focus of …

Conceptual Framework To Integrate Economic Drivers Of Decision Making For Technology Adoption In Agriculture, Thiago L. Romanelli, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola, Andre F. Colaço

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

This study evaluates how much technology adoption could cost in a variety of crop-production scenarios. Cost-reduction simulations consider scenarios of higher input use efficiency such as reducing the usage of diesel, labor, irrigation, fertilizer, herbicide, and seed, among others. The scenarios aim to increase yields by integrating the effect of each input-reduction on the total operating costs. Agricultural production estimates for Nebraska in the US indicates that a technology that saves 1% of diesel is cost-effective, costing between USD 0.15/ha and USD 0.32/ha (for corn). Improvements on input use efficiency should be prioritized to incentivize technology development and adoption. This …

Opportunities And Barriers Faced By Early-Career Civil Engineers Enacting Global Responsibility, Shannon Chance, Inês Direito, John Mitchell

Articles

The term ‘global responsibility’ projects a holistic sense of ethics, sustainability, and obligation. To achieve the long-term viability of human life on Earth, civil engineering must be conducted in increasingly responsible ways, and civil engineers must value and enact global responsibility in their work. Interviews conducted with nine civil engineers in London provide insight regarding engineers’ familiarity with the term, how they learned about it, what opportunities and barriers they face, and what might be done by professional and educational institutions to help them practice more responsibly. Results indicate: the term itself is novel but underlying concepts are not; continuing …

Agri-Food Waste Reduction And Utilization: A Sustainability Perspective, Akinbode A. Adedeji

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

As the human population edges closer to nine billion, we must explore how we can sustainably use Earth’s limited resources. Current agricultural production and food processing create significant amounts of wastes that have drastic effects on the environment, on the cost of production, and on human health and well-being. About a third of these wastes are produced domestically, as well as from agricultural production and food processing, and it often constitutes a disposal problem, although it contains many carbon-based materials (proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, micronutrients, bioactive compounds, and dietary fibers) that can be converted into useful value-added products. Converting these wastes …

Laptop Recycling Case Study: Estimating The Contained Value And Value Recovery Process Feasibility Of End-Of-Life Consumer Electronics, Zebulon Hart

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

Work has been done to establish, through the development and use of novel assay techniques and analysis metrics, the contained value of a sampling of laptop computers (as an analog for myriad e-waste sources). This work has conceptualized e-waste as an alternative to geologic-origin complex metallic ores and has likewise evaluated the feasibility of value recovery from e-waste sources in a similar manner to an ore. The application of conventional and novel mineral separation techniques to e-waste recycling processes has been evaluated and positive results are demonstrated. Further, this work has demonstrated the ability to identify the presence of base …

Combining Green Metrics And Digital Twins For Sustainability Planning And Governance Of Smart Buildings And Cities, Casey R. Corrado, Suzanne M. Delong, Emily G. Holt, Edward Y. Hua, Andreas Tolk

VMASC Publications

Creating a more sustainable world will require a coordinated effort to address the rise of social, economic, and environmental concerns resulting from the continuous growth of cities. Supporting planners with tools to address them is pivotal, and sustainability is one of the main objectives. Modeling and simulation augmenting digital twins can play an important role to implement these tools. Although various green best practices have been utilized over time and there are related attempts at measuring green success, works in the published literature tend to focus on addressing a single problem (e.g., energy efficiency), and a comprehensive approach that takes …

Ammonia Cycling And Emerging Particulate Matter Pollutants Under Arable Land-Use Management: A Modelling Approach, Vivien Pohl

Doctoral

Air quality monitoring in Ireland is under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency in compliance with the Gothenburg Protocol, EU/national legislation, and the National Clean Air Strategy. Particulate Matter (PM) has been acknowledged as a key atmospheric pollutant, with serious public health impacts and no safe threshold of exposure in place to-date. Ammonia (NH3) emissions are linked to the secondary production of PM through atmospheric reactions occurring with acidic atmospheric components such as sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and hydrochloric acid. These reactions result in the formation of ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate and ammonium chloride, among others. More than 95% …

Cruser Place Green Streets Plan, Neal Friedman

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Combining green and complete street design techniques leads to multiple environmental, social and economic benefits that often enhance each other's effectiveness. In urban areas confronting increased pressures of sea level rise, green streets, which incorporate landscaped features or vegetative areas to manage stormwater within the right of way, can be crucial pieces of pedestrian oriented urban design and multimodal planning frameworks that consider and plan for diverse, complementary transportation options. This plan works with the Colonial Place and Riverview Civic League as well as the Norfolk Preservation Collective to come up with green street design recommendations in order to strengthen …

Salt Water Intrusion In Water Distribution Systems: Analysis, Solution, And Eco-Efficiency, Darud E Sheefa

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Since many water distribution systems (WDSs) experience saltwater intrusion, system behavior during saltwater intrusion is important. An alternative to the currently accepted WDS decontamination method of hydrant flushing is needed since during the current procedure all contaminated water is discharged to the surroundings which imposes environmental impacts. Hence, this research was conducted to study salt spread in different WDSs and to seek an alternative to hydrant flushing as a way of WDS decontamination. First, salt contamination was modelled in real water system models to document the salt spread. It was found that (1) if salt enters as a short pulse, …

Achieving Sustainability Through Reducing Risks During Architecture Design Process: A Lean Management Perspective, Sherouk Abdelrehim, Ayman Ahmed Ezzat Othman

Architectural Engineering

The construction industry, as one of the largest industries in the world, plays a critical role in achieving national and international social and economic sustainable development goals. Socially, it is concerned with delivering long-term projects that turn client and end-user requirements into designs that specify technical aspects, functional specific requirements, and standards of quality. Economically, the construction industry contributes to a country's gross domestic product (GDP) by creating jobs and providing the country's infrastructure. the construction industry's nature is more vulnerable than other industries. This is believed to be due to the complex and dynamic nature of construction projects, as …

Innovative Approach To Use Guayule Resin As A Bio-Based Asphalt Alternative, Ahmed Hemida

Doctoral Dissertations

"Asphalt cement will not last long as the world encounters a diminishment in crude oil. Novel resources can contribute to replacing asphalt with the sustainable, flexible pavement. This study presented guayule resin (guayule) as an innovative bio-based asphalt alternative. Ground tire rubber was used as an asphalt enhancer. To judge the guayule's contribution, guayule-based binders were investigated and compared to control asphalt and asphalt-rubber binders. Binders were assessed according to comprehensive Superpave criteria and advanced rheological tests. Component analysis was performed to link the microscale level with the macroscale level. To validate the novel binder, satisfying mix performance tests were …

Artificial Intelligence-Based Material Discovery For Clean Energy Future, Reza Maleki, Mohsen Asadnia, Amir Razmjou

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted materials design and discovery methods can come to the aid of global concerns for introducing new efficient materials in different applications. Also, a sustainable clean future requires a transition to a low-carbon economy that is material-intensive. AI-assisted methods advent as inexpensive and accelerated methods in the design of new materials for clean energies. Herein, the emerging research area of AI-assisted material discovery with a focus on developing clean energies is discussed. The applications, advantages, and challenges of using AI in material discovery are discussed and the future perspective of using AI in clean energy is studied. This …

Grand Challenges In Low Temperature Plasmas, Xinpei Lu, Peter J. Bruggeman, Stephan Reuter, George Naidis, Annemie Bogaerts, Mounir Laroussi, Michael Keidar, Eric Robert, Jean-Michel Pouvesle, Dawei Liu, Kostya (Ken) Ostrikov

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Low temperature plasmas (LTPs) enable to create a highly reactive environment at near ambient temperatures due to the energetic electrons with typical kinetic energies in the range of 1 to 10 eV (1 eV = 11600K), which are being used in applications ranging from plasma etching of electronic chips and additive manufacturing to plasma-assisted combustion. LTPs are at the core of many advanced technologies. Without LTPs, many of the conveniences of modern society would simply not exist. New applications of LTPs are continuously being proposed. Researchers are facing many grand challenges before these new applications can be translated to practice. …

New Type Of Lightweight Aggregate For Use In Structural Concrete, Jamal Khatib, Ali Jahami, Oussama Baalbaki, Adel Elkordi

BAU Journal - Science and Technology

This research studied the utilization of municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash (MSWI-BA) in lightweight coarse aggregate (LWC) production. A special method was followed to prepare the new aggregate to fully replace the normal aggregates (NWA) in concrete. The mechanical properties such as compressive strength, tensile strength, and elasticity modulus were investigated for the LWC concrete. Then, two beams were prepared; one from LWC and the other from NWC. The structural performance of beams made up of lightweight aggregates compared to normal aggregates was investigated. The results showed that this type of aggregates led to a 20% reduction in concrete …

Carbon Footprint Assessment And Emissions Reduction Strategies For The University Of Texas At Arlington, Dravid Sabarish Villavan Kothai

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

In the past decade, many universities have started to ascertain their emissions and benchmark their progress towards sustainability and climate control. The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) is no exception in working toward the goal of carbon neutrality. While UTA continues to grow and transform, its goal is to simultaneously reduce energy intensity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To this end, the Office of Sustainability is maintaining a carbon inventory for each year to track GHG emissions and provide information to guide reduction strategies. The primary objectives of this research were: 1. To update UTA’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory …

Integrated Processing Of Municipal Solid Waste For Maximizing Waste Reduction, Carbon Recovery And Fuel Production, Kameron J. King

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Nationally and internationally, waste generation is increasing and along with it negative environmental impacts. Many people think waste ends at disposal; however, environmental impacts have already begun. Unfortunately, 50% of waste ends up in a landfill which is the third largest source of human related methane emissions and a leading cause of global climate change. This study investigated a novel waste management strategy in hopes of mitigating negative environmental effects caused by conventional waste management practices. The novelty of the study lies in the development of an integrated method of hydrothermal carbonization and an anaerobic digestion (HTC + AD) process …

Long Haulers: The Us Airline Industry And Moving Forward From The Covid-19 Pandemic, James Norman

Aviation Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Sustainability In Commercial Office Buildings, Jack Cullen

Construction Management

Sustainability in the construction of commercial structures has been expanding through the recent years, largely in part due to the increasing ambitions to maintain a green and healthy planet. Regulations for including sustainable features in new or renovated commercial buildings have been growing throughout the country. In fact, many prospective buyers and lessees are even adding sustainable features to the list of what they look for in a potential place to buy or rent. This report will explore whether or not a building’s sustainable aspects appeal to buyers and lessees of commercial buildings, and if these sustainable aspects contribute to …

Application Of Biochar As Beneficial Additive In Concrete, Temirlan Barissov

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Biochar is a high-carbon solid material produced via thermal decomposition of organic biomass in a low-oxygen environment. Characterized with high water retention properties and high alkalinity, biochar is generally used for soil amendment and fertilization purposes. This study is intended to explore the feasibility of using biochar as a beneficial additive of the most used manmade material, concrete. Literature review revealed several studies where biochar was successfully implemented as an additive in concrete. The beneficial influence of biochar on the mechanical characteristics of concrete is based on nucleation and densification effects. However, the internal microstructure, porosity and chemical composition of …