The goal of this project is to design sustainable brewing processes, such as heat-conservation methods, rainwater harvesting, and improved cleaning methods.

The team designed the processes for brewing companies that typically produce 10,000 barrels of beer a year and emphasize environmental safety and sustainability.

Rainwater harvesting for day-to-day washing and rinsing reduces municipal water usage. New cleaning methods and chemicals that are less harsh on the municipal wastewater system further reduce the brewery’s impact

The dairy-processing industry creates a significant amount of wastewater contaminated with biological oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids, and heavy metals.

Energy demands of traditional wastewater-treatment methods are high, and therefore costly. Aerobic bioreactors known as vermifilters are a proven low-energy method of reducing these contaminants in wastewater.

The team researched, developed and tested a small-scale vermifiltration process that will scale up to remediate the 500,000 gallons of dairy wastewater per day produced by the sponsor’s plant.

Rotavirus is the most common cause of stomach flu in young children and accounts for 453,000 deaths every year worldwide. Only 19 percent of the world has been immunized against rotavirus, and there is a substantial need for additional vaccination.

The project team designed a facility capable of manufacturing a rotavirus vaccine on a large scale. The vaccine-manufacturing process has three stages: mammalian cells are grown and infected with a small amount of rotavirus, which then rapidly multiplies; the attenuated virus is filtered from the cells and concentrated; and the final vaccine is formulated, freeze dried and packaged for distribution.

This project’s goal is to design a 5,000 barrel-per-day alkylation unit to be built into an existing refinery in Houston. The alkylate is manufactured using isobutylene and isobutane with a sulfuric acid catalyst.

Concurrent with the alkylate manufacture, impurities in the isobutylene and isobutane feeds, such as n-butane, are separated out and sold. The design includes construction of an acid-regeneration unit so that acid regeneration can be done on site.

The final alkylate product, isooctane, is sent to the refinery to raise the octane content of the gasoline it produces.

The team set out to create a process to remove algae and excess nutrients from an ocean to restore a once-thriving coral reef and the life it supported. Biosphere 2, the Earth systems science research facility in Oracle, Arizona, is equipped with a 700,000-gallon ocean, which the team used as a basis for modeling ocean water reclamation and observing ocean life.

The design concept uses biological and mechanical processes to restore ocean conditions to similar to those found in the Sea of Cortez. These include a hydroponic system with an affinity for nitrogen and phosphorus uptake, ion-exchange columns to remove ammonium and nitrate ions, and drum filters to eliminate the invasion of algae and harmful bacteria.

The design aims to add sand filters, a plate-and-frame heat exchanger, and a 400-nanometer wavelength ultraviolet light. This design will be the basis of a sustainable Biosphere 2 project that ensures the survival of ocean organisms while keeping a low environmental footprint.

The goal of this project is to create a climate-resilient water-treatment plant and solar energy system housed in a shipping container that supports a hydroponic or aquaponic system.

After assessing customer or community resources, the container setup can be modified to intake, treat and recycle rainwater, grey water and run-off water. Solar energy powers the filtration and ultraviolet disinfection treatment process. Introducing an aquaponic system provides plants with naturally produced nutrients. Water treated to potable standards can be used by plants and for human consumption.

These features make the pod portable, customizable and easy to maintain. Rural communities with limited access to basic utilities can benefit from this project, as can anyone who wants to rely less on the grid or be completely off-grid.

The leaching solution used in mines for copper extraction contains rare earth elements. The objective of this project is to design an industrial scale-up of a process to selectively recover and concentrate rare earth elements yttrium and neodymium from a copper pregnant leach solution.

A laboratory-scale version of this process has been developed at the University of Arizona by researchers in the Department of Mining and Geological Engineering. This process incorporates a slip-and-recycle stream into the current copper-extraction process to maximize cost-effectiveness and sustainability.

This design includes a feasibility study of multiple rare earth processing methods, such as solvent extraction and ion exchange. The resulting high-purity neodymium and yttrium metals could help meet growing global demand for rare earth minerals.

The team analyzed the complexity, efficiency, economics and environmental impact of batch and continuous ibuprofen-manufacturing processes to determine which was superior.

Continuous production of pharmaceuticals has advantages over traditional batch processing, which is slow due to downtime spent cleaning and performing quality checks after production cycles. Continuous manufacturing, however, sends materials through a nonstop process until the final product is completed.

Continuous processing is faster, more efficient, and safer due to reduced human involvement. After initial investment in a continuous pharmaceutical production process, this method could be a less expensive way to produce pharmaceuticals, with the potential for more affordable products.

Early production facilities take crude oil from wells and process it to meet environmental and standard specifications. The goal of this project is to design such a facility for two wells that extract light and heavy crude from an oil field in Batman, Turkey.

The facility designed uses several tools to remove oil contaminants such as water, basic sediments, and sulfur. The first stage of the process designed by the team separates crude straight from a well into natural gas, water and oil.

The oil is then heated to reduce its viscosity and mixed with fresh water to dilute the salt concentration. This mixture is passed through an electrostatic coalescer that uses an electric field to polarize and separate the water and salt, which allows the crude to meet basic sediment and water specifications. Oil then goes to a stripping column where nitrogen is bubbled through it to remove hydrogen sulfide. The crude is cooled before storage and transportation.

The aim is to design an unmanned aircraft that can take off vertically and observe small areas. The team’s aircraft, configured as a flying wing and lifting body, takes off and lands vertically, hovers, and can fly long distances efficiently.

Wingtip motors and propellers move the plane horizontally, and transition to vertical to supplement the four central fans that provide most of the vertical thrust during hover. The fans are shut down during horizontal flight for better overall aerodynamics. The aircraft weighs a kilogram, has a wingspan of about 1.25 meters, carries a payload of 100 grams, and can fly for 20 minutes.

Equipping the aircraft with a camera linked to a ground station makes it suitable for missions such as area surveillance for reach and rescue and monitoring localized fires.