U.S. Department of Energy Marine Energy Collegiate Competition (MECC)

Team Name: PRO BRO

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

Team deliverables

Vision and mission: Why this competition?

Global water scarcity currently impacts 1.42 billion people living in high to extreme water-vulnerable areas, which are largely coastal. This scarcity is expected to grow to 4.8–5.7 billion living in potentially water scarce areas at least one month per year by 2050. However, the ocean is a renewable, sustainable energy source with the potential to meet the demands of basic needs while minimizing environmental pollution. And because seawater covers roughly 71% of Earth’s surface, it is widely accessible.

Our team sees this as an opportunity to harness wave energy to provide clean water and electrical energy to coastal communities while preserving the environment. By competing in the Marine Energy Collegiate Competition, our team hopes to mitigate the extent of water scarcity by improving seawater desalination processes for large-scale municipal and industrial uses as well as for isolated communities.

Background

Our team plans to improve the efficiency of wave-powered desalination systems by incorporating a salinity-gradient-driven energy recovery device that generates electricity by recycling high-salinity brine. We plan to model/simulate the system and confirm the results with data collected from a functioning prototype.

We want to prove that a salinity-gradient-driven energy recovery device, using pressure retarded osmosis (PRO—the first half of our team name) can be coupled into a batch reverse osmosis (BRO—the second half of our team name) desalination cycle. and successfully perform desalination and energy recovery functions. The recovered electricity can reduce the cost of a desalination cycle, provide additional energy capacity during peak hours, and directly improve desalination processes isolated communities need as well as those experiencing disaster recovery scenarios.

Strategy

Many deliverables of the competition have similar objectives and deadlines to many team members’ concurrent senior design course. Our team intends to create documents that meet both the course and competition’s deliverable requirements to streamline the workload. Due to long lead times and delays in procuring prototype components, we have learned to plan in advance and order needed parts ahead of time.

Although Purdue University participated in the competition last year, this year's team is made up of an entirely new group of undergraduate researchers. We were able to recruit with the help of an advisor’s connection to the School of Engineering and by communicating our interest in collaborating with undergraduate researchers whose research projects pertain to our competition project. Our team is well rounded, including members with experience in fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, analytical modeling/simulation, systems and controls, environmental engineering, computer-aided design, manufacturing, project management, and economics, all of which benefit our goal.

Speaking with the previous team and learning from their success, as well as having access to water desalination experts who can fill knowledge gaps through our academic partner, Warsinger Water Labs, will help us develop a novel and technologically advanced solution that can provide unique value to a variety of customers. We have had some preliminary discussions with potential corporate partners and target customers. Our team has learned that stakeholders are eager to secure a product that reduces water scarcity, increases water and power security in coastal communities, and reduces the environmental impact of desalination processes. We will use these lessons to help guide us to a solution that fulfills these needs.

Social media accounts

Instagram: @purduemecc

LinkedIn: Purdue MECC

The 2022 Purdue University team

This portal is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) under Contract Number DE- AC36-08GO28308 with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Contract Number DE-AC05-76RL01830 with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Contract Number DE-NA0003525 with Sandia National Laboratories, as part of the MHK Data Communities project. The United States Government retains, and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes.

MECC 2022 Purdue University