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

Team Name: The Wavy Team

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina, and University of North Carolina Wilmington

Team deliverables

Vision and mission: Why this competition?

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s Wavy Team took a strong interest in the U.S. Department of Energy Marine Energy Collegiate Competition (MECC) because the competition provides opportunities to make a positive impact while building valuable work experience and industry connections.

Background

The North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Marine Energy team is designing, building, and testing a solar ocean thermal energy conversion (SOTEC) system to power a device that will sustain a multi trophic aquaculture ecosystem—in other words, a system that can power a fish tank. The device will rest in the gulfstream and utilize the temperature difference between warm water near the surface of the ocean and cold water deeper below the surface to produce power. The device will use solar collectors to drive up the temperature difference.

Our device focuses on three Cs: Corporation, Consumer, and Conservation.

Corporation: Our device will fuel the economy by powering the cultivation of the finfish, shellfish, and ornamental industries. Excess power from the system could potentially be sent to the local grid, power shelter for onboard fish farmers, or electric automobiles that transport goods to and from the farms.
Consumer: It will provide a sustainable and safe food supply for consumers because of its location. The continuous flow of water in the gulf stream will allow aquatic life to grow and thrive.
Conservation: Our device is carbon neutral, which will help fight ocean acidification. Additionally, marine aquaculture products such as dead fish, fish waste, algae, seaweed, and bacteria can be used as soil amendments or be analyzed for research purposes.

Through our participation in the 2022 MECC, we aim to develop a cost effective and environmentally friendly product that can produce a large amount of energy, provide in-house, healthier food options for the American people, and experience in the business side of engineering a product.

Strategy

The project only lists one rigid requirement: The device must be powered at least 51% by water. We applied the engineering design process to create our own criteria and constraints for our device. We frequently collaborated with faculty and students from the University of North Carolina Wilmington to strengthen our business proposal and plan development. We can easily test our product in the classroom, as well as in nearby bodies of water in North Carolina.

We plan to develop our device design in Solidworks and utilize the DWSIM Chemical Process Simulator to solidify calculations and requirements. Then we will assemble purchased items and run the system multiple times to determine the perfect temperature differential that will produce the needed power, comparing this to our theoretical temperature differential. To build the device, we will use 3D printing and the Arduino open-source prototyping platform. During the build, we will assess the device’s size and weight to develop the most efficient product.

Recreating oceanic conditions in the classroom presents a challenge for us. In addition, the limitations on in-person activities in response to the ongoing pandemic have prevented us from doing research that involves travel. Finally, some of our device components have been difficult to acquire because of lengthy lead times, high costs, and license requirements. However, we lean on our team’s strengths—which include our diverse mix of academic disciplines, our strong experience with computer-aided design programs, and support from our mechanical engineering department and local businesses—to overcome these challenges.

Social media accounts

Instagram: @ncatmarineenergy

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 The Wavy Team