Solar power is becoming increasingly economically feasible. The goal of this project is to design a concentrated solar plant to power all the houses in Chandler, Arizona.

The plant consists of a central power tower filled with molten salt heated by solar energy, which allows the plant to produce large amounts of energy through various turbines and generators.

The plant creates zero emissions and, unlike similar solar plants, reuses all its water during steady-state operations. The economical feasibility of this type of plant has been determined.

Ivermectin is an antibiotic derived from avermectins, naturally occurring compounds found in soil microbes. It is effective against parasites and has been used against river blindness, lice, scabies and many other diseases. Merck & Company owns the patent for ivermectin and produces 3-milligram pills for human use.

To produce ivermectin, the team proposes a facility with four stages: catalyst production, ivermectin synthesis, purification, and packaging. The catalyst-production stage includes a batch reactor that produces Wilkinson's catalyst, which creates ivermectin by hydrogenating a specific double bond in avermectin’s molecular structure. This hydrogenation occurs in a batch reactor at the ivermectin-synthesis stage.

Wilkinson’s catalyst contains rhodium, which is reduced to 9 ppm by separators in the purification stage. The packaging stage dries and packages the powder ready for sale and distribution.

Manufacturing processes that use carbon fiber composites all face the same challenge: removing the mandrel core from the cured part. One solution is castable, water-soluble aggregates typically composed of plasters and binders.

This method works well for composites with complex geometries that make removing the mandrel core difficult and labor-intensive. The sponsor’s AquaPour is a castable, water-soluble product used to make composites in the aerospace, defense and sporting goods industries. The objectives of this project are to increase the product’s green strength for faster mandrel extraction from molds, improve compression strength, optimize water transport and delivery, and improve washout time.

The resulting design involves methods such as crosslinking polymers and using desiccants to absorb water and prevent hemihydrate formation, optimization of water content and recipe, and incorporation of sodium silicate with ester-driven reaction for hardening.

Significant research and funding has gone into developing so-called “toilet-to-tap” systems that can treat wastewater to make it 100 percent safe and potable in a single closed loop

The goal of this project is to design a treatment facility and process to treat 30 million gallons per day of wastewater and turn it into drinking water. Wastewater of the same composition as that found in Tucson, Arizona, was evaluated and a full-scale process and operation were designed to remove solids and harmful chemicals in the water, and further purify it to EPA drinking water standards.

The team incorporated features such as gravity-induced flow and recycling bacteria into a bioreactor, and the entire process was designed with economic feasibility, and thus the consumer’s water bill, in mind.

The wastewater-purification system on the International Space Station recovers about 75 percent of the contaminated water on board. Increasing this recovery rate decreases the need for resupply missions.

The design team’s goal is to design a water-purification system that can increase the life expectancy of the overall system. The designed trace contaminant control system uses an activated-charcoal bed followed by an alumina bed to remove large contaminants such as siloxanes. After the beds, the stream passes through a photocatalytic oxidizer that uses ultraviolet light and titanium dioxide to create radicals and remove volatile organic compounds.

Finally, the Microlith sorbent bed removes contaminants such as ammonia and carbon dioxide. A heat-exchanger network has been developed using space as the condenser. The designed system is scheduled to be implemented in the late 2020s.

Biogas produced by anaerobic digestion of organic material at wastewater-treatment plants is often disposed of by flashing and not reused as fuel. Solid oxide fuel cells can convert the chemical potential energy of biogas fuel, combined with an oxidant, into electrical energy without the need for combustion.

The goal of this project is to design a solid oxide fuel cell and gas turbine hybrid for a wastewater-treatment plant. Excess fuel and heat generated by the solid oxide fuel cell are recovered and fed to a micro gas turbine in a cogeneration system that increases the overall efficiency of the system.

Previously underused biogas is thus used as a biorenewable fuel source, producing electricity that can then be sold back to the electrical grid to reduce the overall utility costs of the wastewater-treatment plant.

Refineries had to design new processes following the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2014 decision to limit sulfur content in commercial diesel fuel to 15 ppm.

The goal of this project is to redesign an existing hydrodesulfurization unit in the Delaware Valley to allow for the production of 30,000 barrels per day of ultralow-sulfur diesel fuel with a sulfur content of less than 15 ppm.

The team used Aspen HYSYS simulation software to model and optimize a new hydrodesulfurization catalytic process based on data from industry literature. In the new unit, the feedstock is mixed with hydrogen before being heated to the start-of-cycle temperature. The mixture is then passed through a packed-bed reactor filled with a nickel-molybdenum and silicon dioxide catalyst where sulfur is converted into hydrogen sulfide. The hydrogen sulfide is separated in the final stage using a distillation column to produce the ultralow-sulfur diesel product.

The goal of this project is to design a process for the continuous production of Enbrel, an arthritic drug that is an active biologic. The drug is a fusion protein secreted by live Chinese hamster ovary cells and is batch-made in a bioreactor.

Modeling the system with several reactors allowed the team to transform the process from batch to continuous. From the bioreactors, cells are centrifuged before being filtered to remove cellular components.

The protein of interest, etanercept, is further separated by affinity chromatography before viral inactivation and more chromatography steps. The protein goes through viral filtration and diafiltration before it becomes the final product.

The project objective is to design a microbrewery using wastewater and other environmentally friendly processes. The design includes treating effluent from a wastewater-treatment plant using reverse osmosis, ozone and ultraviolet light to create a safe, reusable water source for brewing.

A biodigester uses spent grains to produce methane, which can be used as a heat source for the brewing process. Digested grains are fed back into the process and used as the carrier material for immobilized yeast. Two different types of packed reactor are used in order to produce the best flavor possible.

These reactors allow long periods of continuous fermentation with less downtime, and enable control of the amount of beer produced. The brewery is designed to produce 10,000 barrels per year.

Tannic acid is a polyphenol found some plants and trees that causes a dry mouthfeel by decreasing saliva levels. It is also used in the food-processing, cosmetic and anticorrosion industries. Tannic acid is traditionally extracted from high-concentration sources such as pomegranates, but it also exists in many plants native to the Southwest.

The goal of this project is to explore the feasibility of extracting tannic acid from mesquite bark. Using a common solvent, a group of compounds was extracted from the biomass. The extract was separated using column chromatography and analyzed using common lab techniques.

After achieving the desired purity, the team designed a plan for a pilot-scale plant that incorporated calculations of economic feasibility, market demand, energy consumption, process schematics, and future outlook.