It is known that several million gallons of water are treated daily for fracturing, injection, disposal and reuse operations during oil and gas production.  The use of fresh water sources for fracturing operations is discouraged and not advisable.  Fortunately, over the past decade, the Oil and Gas Industry is making an enormous effort to recycle and re-use produced water from onshore/offshore operations and to use alternate water sources for well operations.  Produced water can contain 500-180000 mg/L of dissolved solids concentration compared to fresh water (<500 mg/L).  Therefore, it is often times necessary to reduce salinity of these waters prior to reuse or recycle.

Current desalination technologies are divided mainly into two categories: thermal and membrane techniques.  The traditional desalination plants based on the multi-stage flash (MSF) distillation and reverse osmosis (RO) processes have been evaluated to be reliable and established processes ^1-2. The main drawback of these processes is that they are energy intensive. The energy cost of supplying the projected global water need with present technologies is high – especially in a carbon-constrained world. Overall, there is still opportunities to develop water treatment technologies that can process produced water at a large scale with a focus on minimizing energy costs and maximizing water recovery. Recently, hydrate based desalination (HBD) has been proposed for seawater desalination. The advantage of HBD process is that it is less energy intensive since it operates at temperatures well above the normal freezing point of water ³. However, limitations of slow kinetics can be overcome through the prudent choice of favorable guest gas/liquid and improved reactor designs. The main focus is to understand kinetics of hydrate formation and decomposition in the presence various promotors.

Objectives:

• Learn how to operate hydrate reactor, differential scanning calorimeter and high temperature gas chromatography.
• Understand how to analyze thermodynamic and kinetic data for hydrae process

1.           Kalogirou, S. A., Seawater desalination using renewable energy sources. Progress in energy and combustion science 2005, 31 (3), 242-281.

2.           Khawaji, A. D.; Kutubkhanah, I. K.; Wie, J.-M., Advances in seawater desalination technologies. Desalination 2008, 221 (1–3), 47-69.

3.           Barduhn, A. J.; Towlson, H. E.; Hu, Y. C., The properties of some new gas hydrates and their use in demineralizing sea water. AIChE Journal 1962, 8 (2), 176-183.

A new approach for assembling and integrating multi-gene pathways into the nuclear genome of microalgae using CRISPR-Cas9 [16] is the focus of this project, which will study the assembly and integration of complex multi-gene biosynthetic pathways into the nuclear genome of the microalgae species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.  The potential of algae-based biofuels [17] and protein therapeutics [18] is well documented, but in order to achieve its full potential, genetic engineering is needed to increase the production of target metabolites to desirable levels. Although recombinant protein expression in the microalgae has recently become more robust, the assembly and expression of complex multi-gene biosynthetic pathways in microalgae has yet to be fully accomplished and is a significant step in our ability to engineer microalgae metabolite production for the production of commercially important products [19], [20]. Thus we hypothesize that based on the successful development of similar methods in other species, an efficient nuclear multi-gene assembly and integration method can be developed co C. reinhardtii.  Biosynthetic pathways consisting of one to four genes will be assembled using homologous recombination in the yeast strain Saccharomyces cerevisiae and integrated into the C. reinhardtii nuclear genome using CRISPR-Cas9.  Multi-gene biosynthetic pathways of increasing complexity will be studied systematically. Pathways to be assembled include well studied selection markers and reporter genes and the biosynthetic pathway for the bioplastic polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) [21]. Once integrated into the nucleus, the genetically engineered strains will be tested using a variety of methods to determine the levels of gene expression and the production level of PHB. The proposed project will provide important insights into the assembly and expression of biosynthetic pathways in microalgae and result in the development of an important tool for genetically modifying the nuclear genome of C. reinhardtii. These insights and the resulting methodology will aid current efforts to produce biofuels from microalgae, enhance our ability to produce therapeutic proteins in microalgae, and be an effective new tool for genetically engineering higher plants and other strains of microalgae.

While the cost of solar panels continues to decrease, the weight and rigidity of currently available devices limits the number and location of these systems. In this project we aim to utilize flexible and lightweight electrode materials to address these challenges. Additionally, we are evaluating electrochemical processes for depositing the photoactive materials on these devices to further improve the practical production of these inexpensive solar cells.

Elastocaloric materials are solids with a pronounced coupling between temperature and mechanical deformation, due to the latent heat of a solid-to-solid phase transformation (akin to the latent heat of the phase change between ice and water). When an elastocaloric is repeatedly pushed and pulled, it can be used as a solid-state refrigerator, with the potential for significant energy savings. Since these materials are mechanically cycled, it is important to know how they respond to cracks. However, the solid-to-solid phase change in the materials complicates their cracking response, and the crack growth response of these materials has only been characterized for a select few temperature points, instead of the wide range of temperatures that they experience. Using a unique thermomechanical capability that is being developed at TU, this work will seek insights about the behavior of cracks in elastocaloric materials while they undergo repeated mechanical loads across a wide range of temperatures. 

Concentrated solar power (CSP) plants has seen an increase in research and investments due to its ability to store energy in the form of molten salt. This gives CSP systems on-demand energy generation capabilities, overcoming a significant drawback of conventional photovoltaic solar panels.  In a central tower configuration, gas receivers are used to heat super-critical carbon dioxide that is later used to produce electricity using a Brayton cycle. Currently, a higher operating temperature on the receiver is being pursued in order to reach higher efficiencies, hence fueling research of advanced materials.

In this project, a novel micro-vascular Carbon/Carbon composite is proposed that can withstand the temperature and pressure conditions (800 ˚C and 200 bar) of the next generation of CSP plants. The composite is fabricated from a first produced prepreg made with carbon fibers and a phenolic resin, that is later converted into a Carbon/Carbon composite through various heat treatments. It is also proposed to have an embedded micro-vascular channel network to flow super-critical carbon dioxide as the heat transfer fluid.  During the prepreg preparation, this microvascular channel network is embedded using a VaSC (vaporization of sacrificial component) technology. This channel network is kept in place during the subsequent heat treatments that ultimately convert the phenolic/carbon fiber material into the finalized Carbon/Carbon composite. A prepreg with a low void content and which maintains the channel geometry is desired. This research will focus on changing experimental parameters during the fabrication of the prepreg and its effects on the thermal and mechanical properties of the composite, such as heat capacity measured with DSC (differential scanning calorimetry) and tensile strength tests.

Somewhere between one and eighteen barrels of brine (or produced water) are produced from petroleum wells for every barrel of crude oil produced in the state of Oklahoma. These brines can contain 5 times the amount of salt present in seawater, and, if they escape from storage facilities, it can cause a collapse of the soil structure reducing soil drainage, increasing erosion, and resulting in the death of native plant life in the brine-affected area. To reclaim the soil, the excess sodium and chloride must be removed, and replacing the sodium with calcium would further rejuvenate the soil. Electrokinetic (EK) remediation, is an excellent potential method to remove a large portion of the sodium and chloride from the salt-contaminated area, while also providing a method to add calcium to the soil without excavation or tilling. This project entails the testing of EK remediation at a historic brine spill location within the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve northwest of Pawhuska, OK. The undergraduate student will be involved with lab-scale testing, remote data monitoring, in-person site maintenance, and data analysis over the course of the project. This project is dependent on another proposal for this research not being funded.