Chocolate is the most popular candy produced in the world. Traditionally, it is presented as bars or nuggets, or molded and sculpted with a great deal of manpower and time. However, with an accessible 3D printer, people could create a custom chocolate figure at a much lower price. Our objective was to design and optimize a procedure to adapt an inexpensive 3D printer to “print” chocolate structures and establish a standard procedure to do so.
As electrical demands continue to increase, so do demands for cooling, particularly when applied to portable power and power storage systems. Lithium-ion, the preferred energy storage system, requires tight temperature control to operate efficiently and safely. We researched the applications of thermoelectric cooling compared to traditional cooling systems such as liquid and blower cooling systems.
The prolific production of plastics—exceeding 8 billion metric tons worldwide as of 2022— has become an environmental problem. These materials are useful because they are cost-effective and have diverse desirable properties. But these plastics end up in water and food supplies and natural ecosystems. In the US, less than 9% of plastic waste undergoes recycling. Polyolefins such as linear polyethylene (HDPE), form most of the world’s plastic waste. Polyolefins are chemically inert, so chemical recycling and industrial composting are not economical options.
Flow characterization has many useful applications in chemical and biomedical engineering industries. Laminar flow in water produces a glass-like presentation that is visually pleasing. We wanted to produce a consumer-grade level laminar flow nozzle device that retains this aesthetic quality but is comparable to other existing products which cost between $600 and $2000.
In 1999, The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) introduced efforts towards producing alternative chemical energy sources by starting an annual student chemical engineering competition, the AIChE Chem-E-Car Competition. This competition revolves around building a small-scale (shoebox size) car that is powered by energy produced by a chemical reaction. A chemical reaction must also be used to stop the vehicle. Students compete with teams from other universities in guiding their car as close as possible to a certain target distance.
Healthcare providers around the world experience inconsistent plasma supply used for trauma victims and surgery. The limitation of the existing plasma supply system is that it is entirely reliant on donors, who don’t consistently donate plasma, resulting in large fluctuations with long periods of low plasma stocks. This project aims to help mitigate the issue of the inconsistent plasma supply the healthcare system experiences by utilizing bioreactors and modified E. coli to create recombinant human serum albumin.
Human serum albumin (HSA) a cellular protein profoundly important in maintaining health and combating disease. It is derived from large pools of human plasma, so access to the protein is heavily dependent on available and acceptable donations. The medical community’s annual albumin request is about 500 metric tons worldwide, and the current source supply cannot meet such high demand. Additionally, such sources of albumin present potential dangers due to difficulty with ensuring donor traceability, in terms of an individual’s viral status.
We aimed to create an on-demand, portable water treatment plant housed within a 1ft³ cube with a budget of $1,500. The spirit of our project stemmed from the 2022 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) ChemE Cube competition. The primary objective was to purify 25 liters of water per day adhering to EPA and international drinking water quality standards. As a humanitarian effort, our goal was to streamline water purification processes so that water-insecure regions can purify worst-case scenario water with minimal equipment and energy costs.
The US Energy Information Administration estimates that up to 30% of natural gas (NG) reserves are flared into the atmosphere, producing an average of 111,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year. NG is primarily composed of methane and is flared to create CO₂, which is a less potent greenhouse gas. NG is often flared when it is stranded in an isolated location, making recovery economically unviable. To combat the under-utilization of NG as an energy resource, we designed a modular process to harvest and convert it into useful, liquid fuel products.
Patients with below-the-knee amputations who use prosthetic legs often have issues with the fit of the prosthetic leg due to the changing volume of the residual limb throughout the day. To date, there is no compact, affordable device available to the general amputee community that easily and accurately measures volume change throughout the day, alerting the patient that changes need to be made with the amount of prosthetic socks worn, or alerting a device inside the prosthetic to automatically adjust for them.
