Chemical Engineering Commons^™

Improved Oxidative Stability In Biodiesel Via Commercially-Viable Processing Strategies, Gregory Lepak

All Theses

Biodiesel made from waste cooking oil (WCO) frequently requires antioxidants to meet oxidation stability specifications set forth in ASTM D6751 or EN 14214. In contrast, unrefined cottonseed oil (CSO), containing tocopherols and high concentrations of gossypol, a toxic polyphenolic antioxidant, is unique for biodiesel processing because it produces biodiesel resulting in higher oxidation stability. During biodiesel production, however, only a portion of these endogenous natural antioxidants are suspected to be retained. Because the economics of biodiesel manufacturing rely upon inexpensive sources of triglycerides, emphasis was placed upon developing improved alternative commercially-viable processing strategies where WCO is the main source of …

Identifying, Monitoring, Quantifying And Converting Algae To Bio-Fuels In Bio-Reactors, Alice C. Jernigan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Growing algae as a source for bio-fuels has become an area of interest due to concerns about global warming and the reliability and ecology of the production of fossil fuels. Dried algae harvested from a pilot water quality improvement technology at the Rockaway Wastewater Treatment Facility in New York were examined as a source of carbohydrates and lipids for the production of bio-fuels in bio-reactors. The length of storage time, storage conditions, sugar and lipid extraction processes, and fuel production were studied. The results show that if the algae is stored dry (0.015 g/g algae even after a year in …

Membrane Compatibility With Switchable Polarity Draw Solutions For Use In Forward Osmosis Applications, Benjamin Joseph Coscia

Honors Scholar Theses

Water scarcity is problem being faced worldwide and present in every continent. Close to one-fifth of the world’s population has difficulty acquiring safe water, and the problem is worsening as populations continue to grow in poorer countries. As the availability of unimpaired freshwater sources dwindle, water sources, such as the oceans and saline ground waters, must be tapped. However, desalination technologies are very expensive due to a high energy requirement. Forward osmosis (FO) is a process which may be able to replace or become integrated with existing desalination technologies like reverse osmosis. FO relies on an osmotic agent, or draw …

Coal Fires: An Environmental Disaster, Edward K. Jenner

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Coal Fires are an environmental disaster.

Coal Fires: An Environmental Disaster, Carolyn Schardt

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Coal Fires are part of an environmental disaster.

Expression, Purification, And Large-Scale Production Of The Human Recombinant Annexin-V Protein, Gayatri Suresh Kumar

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Annexin-V is a cytosolic protein involved in many significant physiological roles including stabilization of the phospholipid membrane, regulation of blood coagulation, and cell apoptosis or programmed cell death. Though the exact mechanism of Annexin-V in the human body is not fully understood, its wide range of applications in the medical field cannot be denied. Annexin-V can be applied in cancer therapy as a diagnostic to detect cell apoptosis and determine the effectiveness of chemotherapeutic drugs. Furthermore, Annexin-V could even be used as a drug delivery vehicle in the treatment of cancer. Commercially useful proteins like Annexin-V are in high demand, …

Water System For Developing Countries / Disaster Relief Made With Local Materials, Florencio Serrano Castillo

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The objective of this project was to design a water purification system that can be constructed from easily available materials, common to the particular country, and is capable of the complete water purification process. The designed system consisted of a treadle pump (built from wood or bamboo) to pull the water from its source, a filter (made of readily available materials such as sand) to remove contaminants and improve palatability of water, an electrolysis system to allow chlorination from salt water (using locally sourced salt), and a car battery (which could be sourced from a scrapped car) that could be …

Probing Cell Membrane And Biofilm Extracellular Matrix Interactions With Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha And Interleukin-6 Through Molecular Dynamics Simulations Using A Detailed Chemical Description, Stephen Desalvo

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Bacterial biofilms are a major cause of persistent infections and diseases with known antibiotic and host immune defense resistances. The interaction of signaling factors, namely small cytokines, with the biofilm and host cell is considered vital to the survival of bacterial biofilms. In this study, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are performed using coarse-grained biomolecular systems to provide significant insight into medical therapeutic advancements in treating persistent and chronic infections. Specifically, MD simulations of the interaction between signaling factors tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) with a model biofilm matrix with detailed description were performed. Additional simulations were used to …

The Effect Of Co-Solvent And Ordered Lattice Structure On Catalysis Of Biodiesel Production In Microreactors, Benjamin J. D. Kegley

Honors Theses

In this study, stable single phase feedstocks for biodiesel production were successfully determined. The addition of free fatty acids, which are considered waste, to the soy bean oil and methanol processing feed as a co-solvent, produces a stable single phase. The single phase feedstock significantly increases initial global rates and supplements the oil with further biodiesel production. A stable single phase feedstock and increased reaction rates are desirable due to the use of continuous heterogeneous biodiesel production in microreactors currently being developed by this research group. Further design improvements to the microreactor design have been determined. Such improvements include the …

Phase Transformations In Calcium Substituted Lanthanum Ferrite, Patrick M. Price

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Increasing world energy demands are still heavily dependent on fossil fuels. To meet these demands, crude oil is increasingly being extracted from remote locations where natural gas pipelines do not exist. It is not profitable for oil and gas companies to transport natural gas by ship or truck from these remote locations so it is combusted on site in the form of gas flares. Critics oppose this practice due to the environmental impact from pollution and carbon emissions created during the flaring process. Oil and gas companies are eager to find profitable ways to eliminate natural gas lines in order …

Validation Of A Diffuse Reflectance Microendoscope With Polydimethylsiloxane Optical Phantoms And Monte Carlo Modeling, Gage Joseph Greening

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

We have introduced a method for creating thin-film PDMS optical phantoms that can be used to validate a bench-top optical device called a Diffuse Reflectance Microendoscope (DRME). The DRME is acquires data on cell surface morphology and sub-surface diffuse reflectance, which may provide clinicians with the tools to diagnose oral cancer at earlier stages. Phantoms were created with PDMS. Optical properties of the phantoms were controlled with the addition of nigrosin and titanium dioxide. Depth of phantoms was controlled by a spin coater. The DRME was built with a combination of filters and dichroic mirrors to separate electromagnetic radiation in …

Poly (Glycerol Sebacate) Nanofibers And Nanofilms For Tissue Engineering Application, Stephanie Grace Cone

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the field of tissue engineering, the development of biodegradable scaffolds that provide both structure and functionality is a major challenge. The use of biological implants, such as decellularized tissues, provides a complete matrix with full tissue functionality, however, problems with immunogenicity often arise when implants from other organisms are used in treatments. As such, there are many benefits to the use of polymeric constructs in tissue engineering. The ability to customize the material, design, and size of an implant provides opportunities for increased structural support and controlled rates of biodegradation. The selection of polymers for tissue engineering applications requires …

Beginning Of Malignant Tumor Cells, Emily K. Shields

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Despite advances in cancer treatments, cancer is still ranked the second leading cause of death. Cancers are started by cancer stem cells (CSCs). CSCs, also called tumor-initiating cells, are found in tumors and are responsible for the growth of tumors and the spread of cancer to other parts of the body. CSCs are very resistant, and cannot be killed by chemotherapy or radiation treatments. These cells can come from healthy stem cells. The environment surrounding the healthy stem cells and mature cells can cause mutations in the cell’s genetics, resulting in development of CSCs. The environment can also increase tumor …

Modeling Of An Oxygenation-Aided 3d Culture For Functional Beta-Cell Expansion, John Lance Mcreynolds

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Introduction: Diabetes affects millions of people and its prevalence is increasing by 2-5% per year. A promising method for the control of diabetes is the transplant of pancreatic β-cell mass. Unfortunately, there is a shortage of the donor tissue that is needed to replace β-cell mass. A potential source of β-cells is the production of β-cells in vitro, but the proliferation rate of β-cells is very slow and elevating the proliferation rate can result in loss of cell function. We observed that β-cells benefit from being cultured in a 3D environment, but in the 3D culture the β-cells often die …

Optimizing Polymer Fluorescence For Explosives Detection, Rose K. Cersonsky

Honors Scholar Theses

Pyrene is commonly used for explosives detection, as when mixed with polystyrene, the fluorescence intensity of the resulting film can be used as an indicator of the presence of nitro-aromatic, nitro-ether, or nitro-amine explosives. Previous studieshave tested a three-component system including pyrene, polystyrene, and a salt, tetrabutylammonium hexafluorophosphate (TBAHP). From these previous studies, it has been seen that vapor pressure of the preparation area is a governing factor in the formation of excimers, which are instrumental in achieving and maintaining fluorescence intensity. In this study, three parameters – solution concentration, film thickness, and molecular weight of polystyrene are examined to …

Drug Delivery With Feedback Control In Bioresponsive Hydrogels, Andrew Wilson

All Dissertations

Bioresponsive hydrogels are emerging with technological significance in targeted drug delivery, biosensors and regenerative medicine. The design challenge is to effectively link the conferred biospecificity with an engineered response tailored to the needs of a particular application. Moreover, the fundamental phenomena governing the response must support an appropriate dynamic range, limit of detection and the potential for feedback control. The design of these systems is inherently complicated due to the high interdependency of the governing phenomena that guide sensing, transduction and actuation of the hydrogel. The objective of the dissertation is to review the current state of bioresponsive hydrogel technology …

Water System For Developing Countries / Disaster Relief Made With Local Materials, Keiron Anton Hamilton Durant

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

My main duty for the project was to design various tests to assess the quality of the water and to assure that the water we were producing complies with the World Health Organization’s standards. I was responsible for researching these requirements and communicating with experts in the field so that our team could make logical decisions as to how the design should be altered. The first professor I had interactions with was Dr. Julian Fairy who is a civil engineering expert in waste water treatment. He advised us on our entire system design and effective ways for testing the chlorine …

Fluorescence Imaging Of Microdialysis Sampling, Jordan Leigh Haynie

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Many biomolecules including proteolytic enzymes known as matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are released when a material, such as a microdialysis probe, is implanted in a living organism. The MMPs cleave structural protein components of the extracellular matrix and play an important role in biological functions such as wound healing.1-3 Many enzymatic substrates for MMPs have fluorescent product mimics, and the mimics can be used as agents to monitor biochemical processes.1 In this study, microdialysis, a minimally invasive sampling technique, was combined with fluorescence imaging to determine the possibility of monitoring microdialysis in real-time, and thus provide a method that could ultimately …

A Peptoid-Based Targeted Drug Delivery System For The Treatment Of Metastatic Cancer, Hugh M. Purdy

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Development of a targeted drug delivery system is a critical step in the effort to improve cancer treatments. Such a system would greatly reduce the harmful side effects of chemotherapy by delivering toxic drugs directly to cancerous cells. Peptoids—synthetic compounds that can be easily produced from readily available amine monomers—have great potential for use in targeted drug delivery. This project aimed to develop peptoids that would bind to specific proteins expressed on the surface of cancer cells. These peptoids could be combined into a complex that would bind to the proteins with an even greater affinity than the individual compounds. …

Coal Fires: An Environmental Disaster, Lidsay Hoggatt

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The mission of the Coal Fire Gang (CFG) is to spread awareness about the global issue of uncontrolled coal fires, and to highlight them as a low-hanging fruit of immediate emissions reduction. This report summarizes CFG’s research for the WERC competition, for which this topic was chosen as an open task. Beyond raising awareness, CFG modeled, developed and built an experimentation apparatus meant to prove the validity of a relatively cheap extinguishing method which was also novel to the regions in which it could be employed. The apparatus, which simulated an underground coal fire, was used to test a sand …

Fabrication Of Nanoscale Features On Surfaces, James C. Proctor

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

A method to form nanofeatures on the surface of a material by utilizing a prefabricated polymer nanostructures is proposed. A means by which the polymer structures can be produced is discussed. The advantages and disadvantages of this process and other nanolithography processes are evaluated.

Coal Fires: An Environmental Disaster, Daniel Robert Miskin

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The mission of the Coal Fire Gang (CFG) is to spread awareness about the global issue of uncontrolled coal fires, and to highlight them as a low-hanging fruit of immediate emissions reduction. This report summarizes CFG’s research for the WERC competition, for which this topic was chosen as an open task. Beyond raising awareness, CFG modeled, developed and built an experimentation apparatus meant to prove the validity of a relatively cheap extinguishing method which was also novel to the regions in which it could be employed. The apparatus, which simulated an underground coal fire, was used to test a sand …

Water System For Developing Countries/Disaster Relief Made With Local Materials, Cayla Tichy

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The United Nations estimates that water-borne illness accounts for 80% of deaths in developing nations and that nearly 1 in 6 do not have access to clean water (1). However, despite the ability to produce water in the developed world from complex streams such as wastewater or seawater, challenges remain in providing this basic resource in the developing world. Too often the approach has been to apply a high-tech solution, which requires significant technical expertise to run and significant financial resources to repair. Furthermore, as every developing nation faces different challenges, a new solution must be provided for each situation. …

Coal Fires - An Environmental Disaster, Nicholas Kordsmeier

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The mission of the Coal Fire Gang (CFG) is to spread awareness about the global issue of uncontrolled coal fires, and to highlight them as a low-hanging fruit of immediate emissions reduction. This report summarizes CFG’s research for the WERC competition, for which this topic was chosen as an open task. Beyond raising awareness, CFG modeled, developed and built an experimentation apparatus meant to prove the validity of a relatively cheap extinguishing method which was also novel to the regions in which it could be employed. The apparatus, which simulated an underground coal fire, was used to test a sand …

Water System For Developing Countries / Disaster Relief Made With Local Materials, Dong Joon Lee

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

As the equipment builder of the team, I was responsible for building the treadle pump, the sand filter tank, the hand pump, and generating the instructions for each equipment. Each team member was responsible for certain parts of the water purification system, but everyone worked cohesively on all parts of the design when assistance was necessary. The original design for the treadle pump was a two-man powered pump which discharged water at 15 gallons per minute. Since our system only required less than half of the flow rate, and required another person to operate the bicycle, the pump was redesigned …

Coal Fires: An Environmental Disaster, Turner Tomlinson

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The mission of the Coal Fire Gang (CFG) is to spread awareness about the global issue of uncontrolled coal fires, and to highlight them as a low-hanging fruit of immediate emissions reduction. This report summarizes CFG’s research for the WERC competition, for which this topic was chosen as an open task. Beyond raising awareness, CFG modeled, developed and built an experimentation apparatus meant to prove the validity of a relatively cheap extinguishing method which was also novel to the regions in which it could be employed. The apparatus, which simulated an underground coal fire, was used to test a sand …

Water System For Developing Countries / Disaster Relief Made With Local Materials, Lauren E. Cole

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

At the beginning of this project, I elected to focus mainly on the electrolysis portion. I completed a lot of research on electrolysis in general, and then specifically on brine electrolysis, which is transforming a salt water solution into a sodium hypochlorite solution, or bleach. I researched all of the different types of electrode materials and purchased several electrodes in order to perform experiments. I researched several methods of electrolysis in use today. I performed several calculations about the electrolysis reaction, including the electric potential required to drive the reaction (approximately 1.0 volt), as well as what concentration of salt …

Study Of The Structure-Property Relationships That Determine The Effects Of Latexes And Starch Containing Latex Emulsions On The Performance Of The Barrier Coatings (Sub-Coat) For Paper, Joanna Marie Monfils

Master's Theses

The history of carbonless paper dates back to the 1940s. Before this, a carbon copy sheet was needed between sheets of paper to be able to produce one or more copies simultaneously during writing. The pressure from a pen or typewriter would help deposit the ink of the carbon paper onto the blank sheet of paper under the original written sheet to create a “carbon copy.” This method did however, have its disadvantages. Not only did it produce a limited number of copies, but it was also a messy process. So came the creative process of using microencapsulated dyes to …

Homochiral Metal-Organic Materials: Design, Synthetic And Enantioseletive Separation, Shi-Yuan Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Owing to the growing demand for enantiopurity in biological and chemical processes, tremendous efforts have been devoted to the synthesis of homochiral metal-organic materials (MOMs) because of their potential applications in chiral separation and asymmetric catalysis. In this dissertation, the synthetic strategies for homochiral MOMs are discussed keeping the focus on their applications. Two distinct approaches have been taken to synthesize chiral structures with different topologies and accessible cavities. The chiral MOMs have been utilized in enantioselective separation of racemates.

Chiral variants of the prototypal metal-organic framework MOF-5, δ-CMOF-5 and [lambda]-CMOF-5, have been synthesized by preparing MOF-5 in the presence …

Study Of Water Transport Phenomena On Cathode Of Pemfcs Using Monte Carlo Simulation, Karn Soontrapa

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation deals with the development of a three-dimensional computational model of water transport phenomena in the cathode catalyst layer (CCL) of PEMFCs. The catalyst layer in the numerical simulation was developed using the optimized sphere packing algorithm. The optimization technique named the adaptive random search technique (ARSET) was employed in this packing algorithm. The ARSET algorithm will generate the initial location of spheres and allow them to move in the random direction with the variable moving distance, randomly selected from the sampling range, based on the Lennard-jones potential of the current and new configuration. The solid fraction values obtained …