Sustainability has become an unprecedented priority in global manufacturing due to the growing concerns over issues such as an aging workforce, environmental degradation, and public health. The simultaneous consideration of the economic, environmental, and social aspects – often referred to as the “three pillars of sustainability” – is crucial to...
Microchannel high temperature recuperators have the advantage of higher heat transfer coefficients and lower size and weight than traditional high temperature recuperators. However, the industrial application of microchannel recuperators are restricted by the high cost of photochemical machining and diffusion bonding. The objective of this paper is to introduce a...
Product development in the 21st century requires integrating sustainability performance evaluation with product design and manufacturing activities. A variety of factors, including climate change, public awareness, and increasingly strict regulations have compelled companies to design and manufacture more sustainable products. While the design phase typically accounts for only 5-7% of...
The ultimate goal of this work is to analyze and compare two predictive models of thermal profile in laser processing of materials. An analytical method that uses closed-form equations to represent a geometric model of a laser heat source will be contrasted with a commercial computational fluid dynamics code that...
Exergy relates to thermodynamic value or usefulness in the universe. In this dissertation, three methods in the realm of "process intensification" are explored to reduce exergy destruction by equipment and processes that are used to convert and upgrade methane. Thermodynamic efficiency of a virtual heat exchanger is improved with a...
Manufacturing technology has continuously evolved and advanced over the past century; this has led to an increase in the production of consumer and industrial goods driven by simultaneous growth in population and wealth. Despite the resulting economic and labor growth, environmental impacts of manufacturing have increased dramatically due to the...
In the second chapter, a foam-core meniscus coating process was developed for retrofitting 100 nm-scale sol-gel anti-reflective coatings onto in-field solar panels through the deposition, evaporation, and curing of wet films.Advantages of this technique include the means to control fluid flow relative to substrate motion and the ability to conform...
Specific energy, defined as the energy consumed by per unit volumetric removal rate, is one of the key metrics used for evaluating the environmental performance of a machining process. Grinding is a traditional machining process, characterized by high specific energy and poor environmental performance. Growing global concerns about climate change...
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems represent nearly half of building energy usage in the United States. Recent building regulations requiring increased air turnover within buildings will result in even greater air conditioning usage. To alleviate these concerns, membrane-based heat-and-moisture exchangers known as energy recovery ventilators have been developed to...
Having a series of excellent properties, the oxide dispersion-strengthened (ODS) steels provide promising solutions for the challenges of structural materials in nuclear energy, especially the development of future advanced nuclear fission and even fusion reactors. The current manufacturing route for ODS alloys includes mechanical alloying (MA) of master alloys or...