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Item Bio-Hydrogen Refueling Station(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2016-04-08) Schubert, Peter J.Hydrogen fuel cell cars are now available for lease and for sale. Renewable hydrogen fuel can be produced from water via electrolysis, or from biomass via gasification. Electrolysis is powerhungry with high demand from solar or wind power. Gasification, however, can be energy selfsufficient using a recently-patented thermochemical conversion technology known as Indirectly- Heated Pyrolytic Gasification. I-HPG produces a tar-free syngas from non-food woody biomass. This means the balance of plant can be small, so the overall system is economical at modest sizes. This makes it possible to produce renewable hydrogen from local agricultural residues; sufficient to create distributed refueling stations wherever there is feedstock. This work describes the specifics of a novel bio-hydrogen refueling station whereby the syngas produced has much of the hydrogen extracted with the remainder powering a generator to provide the electric power to the I-HPG system. Thus the system runs continuously. When paired with another new technology, moderate-pressure storage of hydrogen in porous silicon, there is the potential to also power the refueling operation. Such systems can be operated independently. It is even possible to design an energy self-sufficient farm where all electric power, heat, and hydrogen fuel is produced from the non-food residues of agricultural operations. No water is required, and the carbon footprint is negative, or at least neutral.Item Brownfield remediation powered by renewable energy(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2016-04-08) Schubert, Peter J.Subsurface contaminant plumes are a plague upon the earth. Some 1900 plumes remain after the go-fast atom bomb projects of the Cold War. Countless gasoline station sites dot our cities, leaching heavy metals and chlorinated solvents into drinking water. Superfund-type cleanup is so expensive that many sites languish while toxins continue to spread throughout the ecosystem. Federal funding for remediation research stopped 15 years ago. The only solution now is to move bad soil from one location to another. New advances in stem cell manipulation offer promise to clean up solvent-infused earth with a minimum of excavation at greatly reduced costs. Dielectrophoresis is the means by which polar molecules, in a matrix having a different dielectric constant, can be made to migrate along electric field gradients. A unique configuration called “pills and pillars” facilitates remediation of solvents. Electric field gradients originating in the deeply-driven “pillars” motivate solvents molecules towards the slightly-buried “pill”. When powered by renewable sources, such as solar panels, contaminants within a 1000 m3 volume can be concentrated within a 1 m3 volume at the pill, and then removed for disposal in a certified toxic waste repository. The pills and pillars are easily extracted for removal to a new site every 40 days. The solar panels are man-portable so that a single capital expenditure of a truckmounted kit can serve multiple sites simultaneously, and sequentially. The low labor overhead, the greatly reduced excavation, and the re-use of hardware contribute to make this novel method of brownfield remediation far cheaper than traditional, presently-available methods. Computer simulations including both vadose zone diffusion (natural spreading out) and drift via dielectrophoresis, demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach. The next research step is to build a benchtop model to validate the simulation model, followed by field trials with partners in the environmental remediation industry.Item Control of a Hydraulic Wind Power Transfer System under Disturbances(IEEE, 2015-10) Vaezi, Masoud; Izadian, Afshin; Department of Engineering Technology, IU School of Engineering and TechnologyHydraulic wind power transfer systems deliver the captured energy by the blades to the generators differently and through an intermediate medium i.e. hydraulic fluid. This paper develops a control system for a nonlinear model of hydraulic wind power transfer systems. To maintain a fixed frequency electrical voltage by the system, the generator should remain at a constant rotational speed. The fluctuating wind speed from the upstream applies considerable disturbances on the system. A controller is designed and implemented to regulate the flow in the proportional valve and as a consequence the generator maintains its constant speed compensating for low wind speed and high wind speed disturbances. The controller is applied to the system by utilizing MATLAB/Simulink.Item Solar power satellite with no moving parts(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, IUPUI, 2016-04-08) Schubert, Peter J.The only solution to the global energy mess is sunlight captured in space. No other technology scales as well, and is as clean as Space Solar Power. Best of all, this is baseload power – “always on” – without the intermittency which will always plague ground-based solar and wind. Although invented in 1968, SSP designs have been impractical until now. A novel design architecture, relying on use of materials already in space, enables SSP at costs competitive with existing baseload power sources. And all this without greenhouse gas emissions. This work describes the technology and economics. The “tin can” solar power satellite is comprised of a cylindrical shell of solar panels. This configuration has integral thermal management by using the non-illuminated portions of the shell as a radiating heat shield, maintaining the solar cells within workable temperature ranges. The tethers holding the shell to the central conductor spire present a complex radiative environment which is studied further herein to obtain a more precise measurement of high and low temperature limits. Heat generated by the transmitting antenna and its power electronics is also studied to understand its impact on the requirements imposed on components and subsystems. Achieving a slow rotation of a very large diameter cylindrical shell with minimal internal strength interacts with the assembly process through tradeoffs between propellant, assembly jigs, and construction spacecraft. Vibrations induced in the cylindrical shell are studied including transient behavior during spin-up. The panel-to-panel forces expected during spin-up, and during on-going operations as gravity gradients excite low-frequency modes are studied in order to derive specifications for linkage rotation and strength. Finally, the results of imperfect assembly, lost parts, and meteorite strikes are investigated to assess risk to other spacecraft. Solar wind pressure is evaluated to determine station-keeping requirements. Assembly in an orbit slightly higher than GEO may be selected to minimize collateral damages, and means of adjusting the orbit are studied to derive overall architecture propellant requirements, anticipating a mixture of in situ propellant options versus earth-sourced propellants. This work charts a pathway to the ultimate energy source for all mankind for all time to come.Item SUPERVISORY CONTROL OF COMBINED WIND/SOLAR ENERGY HARVESTING AND BATTERY MANAGEMENT USING MPPT WITH DSPACE IMPLEMENTATION(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2012-04-13) Izadian, Afshin; Girrens, Nathaniel; Yang, Heng; Gavini, Sree LikhitaThe growing demand for renewable energy and for providing electrical power to remote locations provides exciting opportunities as well as interest-ing problems. Wind and solar energies are individually unreliable as a sole means of power generation. Wind power is intermittent at best and can con-stantly change directions; solar power is only available during the day, is considerably affected by environmental conditions and generating maximum power requires proper directioning and controls. They are, however, com-plementary in nature and when combined together with energy storage can provide reliable power. To properly utilize the power generation capability of the system, Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) will be used when there is solar power available, implemented with a Buck-Boost converter for wind and solar. When solar power is not available the wind power will be fed in directly without control. Supervisory control is used to provide reliable power to the load and determine when to charge and discharge the battery based on voltage being fed in by the wind/solar systems. A small scale system is used with dSPACE hardware to demonstrate the effectiveness of the supervi-sory controller.