Project Goal: Design technology to mitigate lunar dust in astronauts’ cabin environment.

Since NASA’s first lunar landing by humans, it has tried to address the damage to technology caused by the moon’s abrasive electrostatically charged dust. This project focuses on solutions and technologies to mitigate the dust.

The filtration system design uses suction to clean the dust out of the air then pass it through an aerogel-packed bed with a series of high-efficiency particulate air filters. A pump recycles the air through the system to trap more dust particulates. The bottom of the system creates an electrostatic field that attracts the charged lunar dust particles. As the air recycles through the system, the dust that does not get trapped by the packed bed and filters is drawn to the electrostatic field at the bottom of the system.

The design is compact and can be used inside the cabin.

Project Goal: Design a process for an environmentally beneficial fuel additive that can be added easily onto an existing ethanol plant to improve its profitability.

Biofuels come from renewable biological materials, such as ethanol from corn, grass, biomass and algae and diesel from soybeans. Replacing fossil fuels with biofuels or blends can cut down on some aspects of fossil fuel production and use, resulting in decreased conventional and greenhouse gas emissions, exhaustible resource depletion, and dependence on foreign suppliers. The EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, encourages ethanol manufacturers to produce biofuel additives cost effectively.

Using an existing corn-based, dry mill ethanol plant, this design synthesizes diethyl ether, or DEE, a highly rated biofuel additive. The catalyzed synthesis process requires minimal equipment and energy, reducing initial costs and making it a viable option for an ethanol plant. The project further evaluated profitability based on DEE’s market value and RFS incentives.

Project Goal: Design a process that treats three different types of wastewater for a chemical engineering integration lab at the University of Arizona.

This design will be used in labs to teach UA undergraduate students about wastewater treatment processes.

Wastewater treatment removes contaminants from wastewater through physical, chemical and biological processes and converts the water into an effluent, which is safely returned to the environment. The centralized U.S. waste treatment industry handles about 75% of the commercial wastewater and industrial process byproducts.

This lab treatment system is expected to purify wastewater found in three industries: mining, agriculture and semiconductor. Each type of waste goes through a designated path that includes treatment processes such as reverse osmosis, coagulation/flocculation, filtration and membrane bioreactor technology. The product must comply with EPA and local regulations for potable water.

Project Goal: Design and build a wastewater treatment laboratory for the University of Arizona Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department to use in a novel hands-on course.

The UA Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering is developing a wastewater treatment laboratory. It will combine several unit operations to purify artificial wastewater for demonstrating classic techniques. The feed streams are modeled after raw water concentrations seen as runoff from common industries in southern Arizona.

The project addresses coagulation, flocculation, gravity filtration and advanced oxidative treatment processes as well as design of the three chemical broths for separation. These were incorporated into a previous team design that uses reverse osmosis and a membrane bioreactor. An interchangeable valve setup varied the order of flow through the subsystems. Separation was characterized by monitoring pH, density, turbidity and electric conductivity throughout the process.

The design included researching, sizing, selecting and building each unit operation and associated equipment so the laboratory can feasibly operate in a safe, cost-effective and environmentally responsible manner.

Project Goal: Separate the components of guayule resin into high-value products, and evaluate their market potential.

Guayule is a desert plant that contains 5% to 7% rubber, primarily in the stalk. It is extracted to make tires. The guayule plant also contains 5% to 9% resin, which can be turned into products to keep the guayule industry economically feasible. Thus, this project explores the separation of the guayule to make marketable products.

The team used ASPEN software to simulate the separation process, including flash and distillation to fraction the resin into terpenes, terpenoids, sesquiterpenes and fatty acids. Resin content varies depending on the environmental conditions under which guayule is grown, and this simulation can be used to predict the required operating conditions depending on the feed composition.

The expected outcome is production of natural products, such as terpenes and terpenoids, which can be sold at approximately $1 a pound.

Project Goal: Recover solvent waste from a polymer processing facility.

In polymer processing facilities, solvent waste contributes to profit and loss and environmental damage. A process to recover wasted solvents can mitigate financial loss and reduce environmental impact.

This design uses various separation techniques to recover solvent from plant waste streams. Flash distillation, column distillation and air scrubbing remove and separate waste stream components. Lash drums remove excess water to use for air scrubbing of vented solvents. After the excess water is removed, column distillation separates remaining components for plant reuse. Trace amounts of unrecovered solvent are sent to a bio pond for biodegradation.

Facility expansion can handle a wide range of flow and concentration fluctuations downstream from the polymer processing facility.

Project Goal: Design a hydrodesulfurization unit that can process 30,000 barrels of diesel per stream day and reduce the sulfur content to at most 15 parts per million to meet EPA standards.

The unit’s design consists of a high-temperature, pressure-packed bed reactor that catalyzes the removal of sulfur compounds from diesel oil.

Integration of heat exchangers and a single cold high-pressure separator reduces energy consumption. An amine contactor recycles unspent hydrogen to ensure large amounts of reactive hydrogen are present in the reactor’s cycle. The catalytic reaction creates other unwanted side products that are removed further down the design.

The design factored in reactor sizing, separation of liquids and vapors, mass and energy balances, and modeling of various chemical reactions. ASPEN PLUS simulated the process to ensure the goal of 15 ppm sulfur.

Project Goal: Design an optimized compact catalytic reactor system for diesel powered vehicles to capture and remove carbonaceous particles.

Because of incomplete combustion, diesel-powered vehicles emit carbonaceous particles. The carbonaceous particles, or PM, contain microscopic solids and liquids less than 10 micrometers in diameter. The particles can go deep into the lungs and bloodstream and cause serious health problems. They also are a major environmental concern.

A diesel particulate filter, or DPF, can be installed in the exhaust system to reduce PM emissions to a level that meets U.S Environmental Protection Agency regulations. In this design, the DPF has a cordierite substrate in a monolith channel configuration to capture 95% of PM. A monolayer catalyst, which combines a transition metal and a noble metal, is applied to the substrate using an impregnation method to aid the regeneration process that oxidizes the PM and controls the thickness of the carbon deposit layer. System pressure and temperature sensors monitor the engine and filtration to prevent failure.

DPF simulations used mathematical models that imitate the flow of exhaust gases through the wall and carbon deposit layer.

Project Goal: While minimizing power input, design a system to recover helium from crude natural gas at the nitrogen removal stage of gas refinement.

Helium, a nonrenewable resource, is used in magnetic resonance imaging, gas-leak detection, welding and many other systems. Helium typically is extracted from crude natural gas, but the separation process to purify helium has high energy requirements and is costly, leading to steep annual increases in its price.

This design uses a double separation column cycle and cryogenic distillation techniques to extract helium from natural gas. The process produces three product streams containing nitrogen, helium and methane. To reduce production costs, the system uses vapor-liquid equilibrium within the process streams to mitigate the need for additional external refrigeration cycles.

The team verified efficiency using hand calculations and simulations in ASPEN modeling software. The design achieves recovery of 96% of helium, and the purified natural gas contains less than 2% nitrogen.

Project Goal: Design a sustainable fish pond in San Carlos, Arizona.

Officials in San Carlos, Arizona, are planning a sustainable fish pond to provide a community recreational area as well as help educate youth and connect them to their culture. This project assesses the design and installment plans.

The location rests on an accessible water well that has a high arsenic concentration. The team considered mass transfer balance, water and soil quality, livestock, cost and life cycle, among other factors.

The project applied fluid flow, evaporation, process design, and process control to determine the success of the pond based on the level of human intervention, livestock and use of the resource.