Energy Conversion & Conservation Center

university of new orleans
energy conversion & conservation center

Energy Conversion & Conservation Center

The Energy Conversion and Conservation Center (ECCC) was established in 1999. Dr. Ting Wang was appointed as the founding director of the ECCC to lead the center from conception to reality. The ECCC conducts research on local, national, and international projects that aim to improve the quality of life by solving technical problems associated with power generation, energy conservation, and efficiency. It is located in the Dr. Robert A. Savoie College of Engineering.

Energy Conversion & Conservation Center

414 Engineering Building
The University of New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana 70148-2220
(504) 280 - 7183

Dr. Robert A. Savoie College of Engineering

Laboratories

ECCC labs are capable of providing measurements and tests in thermal-fluid and power systems including air/steam pressure, flow rates, temperatures, two-phase flow characteristics, flow structures, energy component efficiency, combustion, emissions control, HVAC, and wind tunnel testing. The measurement systems include two 3-D automatic traversing systems, a four-channel hot wire anemometer, two 96-channel thermocouple acquisition systems, two 288-channel pressure scanning systems, a Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA), and 3-D inverse liquid crystal thermography and infrared thermography.

In addition, resources for conducting scientific computation and simulation are available. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes Ansys/Fluent and StarCD are used to simulate the details of the fluid flow, heat transfer, combustion, and gasification. GateCycle and THERMOFLOW are employed to design or improve the efficiency of energy systems and power plants. AspenPlus is applied for designing chemical processes and energy system simulation. TRANE is used for designing heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). A cluster of 100-node parallel processors are available for ECCC for CFD and simulation research with access to the High Performance Computing (HPC) system (LONI) supercomputers.

Research & Development Topics

Improve efficiency and reliability of gas turbines for both aeroengines and land-based engines [, , , , , , ].
Develop new measuring techniques and improving accuracy [] and reliabilities of existing measuring devices and sensors in energy and power industries.
Reduce emissions (NOx, SOx, CO2, CO, and unburned carbon) [] from power/steam [] generation & incineration [].
Improve inlet gas turbine air cooling and wet compression technology for peak load gas turbine systems.[, , , , , , , , , (Best Paper Award), , ]
Mist cooling of high temperature gas turbines [, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ].
Apply IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) to coal [, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ] petroleum coke, and biomass [, , , , , , ].
Investigate uses of IMPGC (Integrated Mild/Partial Gasification Combined Cycle) to retrofit traditional pulverized coal power plants [, , , ].
Investigate future high temperature hydrogen-fueled gas turbine systems.
Investigate the applications of distributed generation (DG).
Investigate fuel cell / gas turbine hybrid cycle.
Micro-combined cooling heating & power (CCHP) [].
Conduct research to increase performance of personal turbines (PT).
Conduct research for using renewable and sustainable energy sources.
Power generation on floating rigs [].
Electrify isolated areas in developing countries.
Optimization for energy system efficiency with artificial neural networks [].
Petroleum coke calcination [, , , , , , , ].
High-pressure and high-flow TurboPiston Pump (TPP) [, , , ].
Vehicle drag Reduction [].
Ejector and Thermocompressor Design [].

Current Research Projects

Sweeping mist jet thermal-flow studies using Fluidic Oscillators. [, , , , ]

(a) Mist flow

ECCC
(b) Air-only film cooling

ECCC
(c) Mist film cooling

This figure shows the effect of injecting tiny water droplets (10 micrometer) into a Fluidic Oscillator on providing a layer cooling film to protect airfoil surface from hot gas intrusion in a gas turbine system. (a) Smaller droplets can be seen being coalesced into bigger droplets inside the Fluidic Oscillator. After injection the droplets are seen to break into two groups sweeping over the surface with a phase lag behind the air flow, which helps to make surface cooling more uniform with reduced thermal stresses. Mist cooling in (c) is about 120% more effective than air-only cooling shown in (b).

(a) Wet paper webs are dried over rotating cylinders by injecting steam into the dryer. The condensate is syphoned out via either a stationary or rotating syphon. (b) Simulation of condensate rimming inside a rotating dryer. (c) Plot of average wall heat flux with time for three different multiphase models categorized by five thermal-flow characteristic phases: (I) Puddling (II) Transitional Cascading (III) Cascading (IV) Transitional Rimming (V) Steady Rimming.

Energy savings in LNG production process [, ]
Optimum design of gas turbine air extraction in IGCC []
Part-load operation strategy for power plants to match intermittent renewable energy generation.
Implementation of hydrogen and ammonia blended fuels in power plants.
High-temperature thermal solar energy application for combined cycle.

Services

Performing energy audits and training auditors.
Consultation on energy management and energy management program implementation.
Conduct energy audits using infrared thermographic imaging and analysis.

Provide Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) design and retrofit.
Provide consultation on energy efficiency and energy management.

Infrared Camera and Thermal Image Example of a natural gas compression plant.

List of Personnel

Dr. Ting Wang Director

Dr. Salvadore Guccione Senior Researcher

Mr. Taylor Weidman Technician

Mr. Mohammad “Javad” Mohaghegh Graduate Assistant

Mr. Alif Shafiyee Graduate Assistant

Mr. Patrick Washington Research/Teaching Assistant

Mr. Tyler Rau Research/Teaching Assistant

Mr. Mazdak Gorji Research Assistant

Mr. Aaron Hock Research Assistant

Mr. Vincent Stevenson Tolmas Scholar

Affiliated Faculty Members:

Dr. Kazim Akyuzlu
(Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Collaborating in Rocket engine combustion, compressible flow, thermodynamics

Dr. Martin Guillot
(Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Collaborating in Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)

Dr. Nicholas Xiros
(Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering)
Collaborating in Marine power and propulsion systems, electric machinery

Advisory Board

Joseph (Jay) V. D’Amico III, P.E.
President and CEO
Louisiana Steam Equipment Company
1735 Tchoupitoulas St.
New Orleans, LA 70130

Maia Hunt
Director Technical Services-Calcination
Rain Carbon Inc.
1330 Greengate Dr.Suite 30
Covington, LA 70443

Jim Melancon, P.E.
Growth Facilities Engineer Team Lead
Chevron North America Production & Exploration
100 Northpark Blvd.
Covington, LA 70433

Richie A. Melancon, P.E.
Assistant Vice President
Manager of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering
Waldemar S Nelson and Company
1200 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, Louisiana 70130

Willie Wilson
Vice President of Power Plant Operations
Entergy of New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana

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