The objective for the spring 2015 semester is to design a piping system that will reroute exhaust gases through a power generation cycle in order to utilize the thermal energy. The group will run a simulation in MATLAB and SolidWorks to determine the efficiency of the system and the net power generated by these exhaust gases.
Cummins sponsored the team to visit the Cummins Technical Center and review current practices, measure electricity consumption to identify actual usage, and evaluate the current process which puts electricity back into the grid from some test cell dynamometers.
After the visit, the team came to a consensus that the best objective to focus on this semester is to provide Cummins, Inc. with a more detailed way to save energy at the facility. This will be done by concentrating our efforts on capturing the energy from the exhaust gases coming out of testing cells of the CTC.
