Boston University College of Engineering

Engineering Alternatives: Innovations in Clean Energy and Sustainability

Global climate change, fossil fueldepletion and the quest for energyindependence have intensified thedemand for high-impact innovation inclean energy and sustainability.Recognizing the critical importance ofcleantech breakthroughs to the nationand the world, Boston University’sCollege of Engineering has put forward aunique and diverse portfolio of leading-edge research and educational programs.

Their primary objective is to investigateand develop novel technologies andprocesses that exploit clean energysources while promoting environmental,economic and social well-being. To thatend, College of Engineering faculty andstudents—drawing on core competenciesin advanced genomics, electrochemistry,nanotechnology, structural acoustics,solid-state materials and devices,thermodynamics, systems engineeringand other disciplines—are advancingseveral promising solutions.

Their efforts could lead to devices thatgenerate electric power from bacteria,ocean waves or sunlight; economicalfuel cells and hydrogen productionsystems; more energy-efficient building,lighting and transportation systems; anda smart grid that considerably reducesfossil fuel consumption.

To achieve their goals, College ofEngineering researchers and educatorsroutinely collaborate with colleaguesthroughout Boston University, as wellas with other academic, governmentand industry partners. Facilitated bythe university-wide Clean Energy andEnvironmental Sustainability Initiative(CEESI), these collaborations integrateexpertise in technology, policy, climatescience, market economics andsystems integration.

Combining a strong commitment toacademic and research excellence withan entrepreneurial spirit, the College ofEngineering is at the forefront of thenation’s efforts to ensure a moresustainable and prosperous future.

Engineering a Cleaner,Greener World

[ [“Through collaborations with Professor MichaelCaramanis (ME) and others within the BU community, I

have been able to publish and present at importantconferences in the energy sustainability and engineeringfields. In addition, we have been leading an initiative to

create a living laboratory for a Smart Neighborhood in theBack Bay of Boston. The goal is to spread awareness on

energy efficiency issues, as well as to begin to bridge thegap between the consumer and utility side of the meter.”

Justin FosterPhD Candidate, Systems Engineering

Academic ProgramsGuided by accomplished faculty members, Boston University College of Engineering undergraduateand graduate students may pursue a wide range of course offerings and research projects thatexplore clean energy technologies and their potential impact on society.

Undergraduate Concentration in Energy Technologies and Environmental Engineering (ETEE)bu.edu/eng/ugrad/concentrations/eteeThe ETEE concentration enables College of Engineering undergraduates to better position themselves forcareers in one of today’s signature engineering fields. Affording greater access to the faculty’s innovative cleanenergy and sustainability research, the concentration enables students to acquire a basic understanding of theenvironmental impacts of various energy generation and utilization technologies, and to designenvironmentally sustainable engineering systems.

Courses and Research OpportunitiesUndergraduate and graduate students are attending courses and conducting research in several disciplinesthat relate to clean energy and sustainability. A partial list includes advanced coatings for energy efficiency;bioenergy; carbon dioxide sequestration; fuel cells and batteries; green manufacturing; networked systems forthe Smart Grid; novel materials for hydrogen storage; ocean wave energy; solar and wind energy systems;solid state lighting; sustainable power systems planning, operations and markets; and thermofluid sciences.

BioenergyRecovering energy from waste and

reducing waste disposal arenecessary for creating a sustainable

modern society. Division of MaterialsScience and Engineering faculty and students havedeveloped a technique to convert hydrocarbon-richmunicipal, agricultural and industrial solid waste tohydrogen, which can then be used within a fuel cell toproduce electricity, or as a transportation fuel. Similarly,biological organisms represent a promising new cleanenergy harvesting resource, and computationalsystems biologists in the Biomedical EngineeringDepartment are manipulating proteins and genes inmicrobes’ metabolic networks to produce hydrogengas and “bacterial fuel cells” that convert sugar sourcesinto electricity.

Fuel Cells, FuelProcessing and

CO2 SequestrationFuel cells promise to reduce pollution

and provide stationary, distributed or mobilepower production from renewable and nonrenewablesources, but manufacturing them can be expensive.College of Engineering researchers have devised anovel process to manufacture solid oxide fuel cells thatdelivers equivalent performance at far less cost thanconventional approaches. They have also come up witha new solid oxide membrane method to process fossilfuel that yields pure hydrogen and sequesters carbondioxide. The fundamental understanding gained fromsuch electrochemical systems can be applied tobatteries and other clean energy technologies.

GreenManufacturing

Conventional primary metalproduction methods emit carbon

dioxide or chlorine, but College ofEngineering researchers have devised an electrolysismethod to produce pure metals from their oxides withzero carbon emissions—and at a fraction of the cost.Their energy-efficient, one-step method promises tosignificantly reduce greenhouse gas emissionsthroughout the industrial sector and enhance U.S.energy security and economic growth. Partnering withindustry, the researchers are developing their methodto produce pure magnesium for the manufacture oflightweight, more fuel-efficient motor vehicles, and toextract pure silicon from sand (silicon dioxide) for usein solar cells.

Nanophotonics-Enhanced

PhotovoltaicsIn collaboration with ARPA-E and

technology startups, the College of Engineering issupporting several efforts to design functionalnanomaterials that not only boost solar energycollection efficiency but also can be produced cheaplyand at a sufficiently large scale to effect real change inthe nation’s energy mix. All exploit photonicstechnologies developed at the Center for Nanoscienceand Nanobiotechnology (CNN). Examples includegraphene-based, transparent window coatings thatabsorb energy from a broader portion of the solarradiation spectrum, and metallic nanostructure arraysand rare-earth atoms that, when coupled to solar cells,improve solar-electric conversion rates.

Boston University’s College of Engineering is advancing promising solutions to challenging problemsin clean energy and sustainability. Collaborating with experts in academia, government andindustry, our faculty and students are spearheading innovations in technology, commercializationand public policy to balance tomorrow’s energy demands with ongoing environmental, economicand social needs. Here are 11 areas in which their efforts are making a difference.

Research

Capturing OceanWave Energy

If harnessed efficiently, ocean wavepower could provide more than 10

percent of the world’s energy and reduce its carbon footprint by two billion metric tons.Drawing on a century of combined researchexperience in wave mechanics, vibrations, energyconversion and electromechanical systems,mechanical and electrical engineering researchers aimto produce cost-competitive systems for deliveringocean wave energy to coastal regions. Unlike typicalsolutions that involve expensive, custom-designed,massive sea vessels, the researchers envisiondeploying scalable networks of low-cost, desk-sizedbuoys made of time-tested marine components.Devices inside each buoy will convert the mechanicalenergy of waves to electric power.

More EfficientSolar Cells

Commercially available solar cellscannot absorb a significant portion of

the solar spectrum, limiting their maximumefficiency (how much absorbed light gets converted toelectricity). But College of Engineering researchers areworking to develop low-cost, next-generation solarcells aimed at producing at least a 10 to 20 percentefficiency improvement over what’s now on themarket. Their approach involves the strategic layeringof indium gallium nitride quantum dots (nanoscalesemiconductor particles) of varying sizes. OtherCollege-based innovations in this area include anelectrostatic method to clean sun-blocking dust fromsolar cells, and carbon nanotubes for enhanced solarenergy applications.

A Smarter GridIn collaboration with the College of

Arts and Sciences, the School ofManagement and industry partners,

College of Engineering researchers areadvancing a more intelligent electric power grid thatcould considerably reduce the nation’s electricity costsand carbon footprint. Drawing on core strengths ininformation and communications technology andsystems engineering, they’re designing point-of-consumption monitors and controllers andoptimization algorithms to enable the grid to minimizepower consumption and costs. Research goals rangefrom coupling intermittent, renewable energy sourceswith rechargeable, plug-in, hybrid electric vehicles, totesting neighborhood-scale, smart micro-grids aimedat improving the efficiency and resiliency of localenergy infrastructures.

Improved White-Light LEDs

Providing the same light for less thanhalf the energy required by a compact

fluorescent bulb, a high-quality white-lightLED would reduce U.S. energy costs by up to $20billion and carbon dioxide emissions by 150 milliontons annually. But today’s white-light LEDs areinadequate for use in general lighting applications. Toproduce white light that you could read by, blue, greenand red LEDs must be combined—and making greenLEDs is very inefficient and costly. College ofEngineering researchers are working to resolve this“green gap” by developing semiconductor particlescalled quantum dots that exhibit unique properties.

Greener BuildingsSince buildings account for 40

percent of U.S. energyconsumption, they are prime targets

for efficiency improvements. Inpartnership with industry, researchers at the Collegeof Engineering, College of Arts and Sciences andSchool of Management are collaborating to improvethe energy efficiency of existing and new buildings.Their technical focus is on developing improvedHVAC design and control strategies, which aresignificantly more energy efficient and highlyeconomical. They are also developing businessmechanisms to accelerate investment in greenbuilding technologies, and designing new contractsand business models to finance investment insustainable buildings.

More Energy-Efficient

Gas TurbinesIncreasing the operating temperature of

gas turbines used for aerospace and energygeneration applications will reduce fuel utilizationthrough improved efficiency and cleaner combustionbyproducts. To enable a significant operatingtemperature increase, College of Engineeringresearchers are developing novel environmentalbarrier coatings, currently under a BU patent, thatallow the introduction of ceramic components intogas turbines. They are also developing thermal barriercoatings with engineered crack microstructures thatwill allow turbine components in the hot-stage totolerate higher combustion temperatures without areduction in lifetime. More recently, they’recombining both types of coatings into a singleadvanced coating system.

Low-Power,Adaptive Lighting

Lighting accounts for about one-sixth of all energy consumption, but

replacing conventional bulbs with lightemitting diodes, or LEDs, would reduce that fractionconsiderably. Even more energy and cost savingscould be achieved with “Smart Light” LEDs,computer-controllable bulbs that College ofEngineering researchers are developing that provideillumination and enable optical wirelesscommunication and networking among electronicdevices within a defined space. Accessedindividually across a digital network, Smart Lightscan be programmed to provide illumination only asneeded, and exploited by a smart grid to reduceelectricity demand within a room, building or cityduring peak periods.

“Cleantech is unique in that itrequires a convergence of ideas frombusiness, technology and policy, andBU has strengths in all three areas.

Thanks in part to connections I madein the College of Engineering’s GreenManufacturing course and at the BU

Energy Club, I landed a full-timeposition at one of the fastest growing

cleantech companies.”

Michael Galbo M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering,2009; commercial building energy analyst

at EnerNOC[ [

Clean energy and sustainability research and education at Boston University’s College ofEngineering are interdisciplinary enterprises enriched not only by colleagues throughoutthe BU campus, but also by other academic, government and industry partners.

Collaborating Across Boundaries

“A special topics course on ‘Building Energy Use and Energy Efficiency’launched my career as an energy engineer. Today I am working with building

owners and facility managers to identify and evaluate actionable energyefficiency and renewable energy savings opportunities throughout the country.”

Elijah Ercolino M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, 2010; Energy Engineer at Nexamp, Inc.

[ [

CAMPUS-WIDE INITIATIVESn Clean Energy and Environmental Sustainability Initiative (CEESI) bu.edu/energyn Boston University Energy Club people.bu.edu/buenergyn GLACIER: Global Change Initiative: Education & Research bu.edu/energy/research/interdisciplinary_project/glacier-project

n Presidential Lectures on Clean Energy and Environmental Sustainability bu.edu/energy/events/pres-lectures

n Sustainability@BU bu.edu/sustainability/what-were-doing/energy

RESEARCH CENTERS AND PROGRAMSn Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE) bu.edu/systemsn Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology (CNN)nanoscience.bu.edu

n NSF Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center at BUbu.edu/smartlighting

n Photonics Center bu.edu/photonics

INDUSTRY AND GOVERNMENTPARTNERSHIPS

n Clean Energy Partners bu.edu/energy/outreach/partnersn Green Manufacturing people.bu.edu/upal/research.htmn NSF Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center bu.edu/smartlightingn Nanophotonics-Enhanced Photovoltaicsn Smart Grid Research Consortium bu.edu/energy/outreach/consortium/consortiumn Smart Neighborhood bu.edu/energy/research/smart-gridn Sustainable Buildings bu.edu/energy/research/projects/green-building-technologies

44 Cummington StreetBoston, MA 02215

bu.edu/eng

An equal opportunity, affirmative action institution.

“In collaboration with Research Professor Malay Mazumder (ECE),I have been researching self-cleaning solar panels that can help

improve photovoltaic efficiency. Through this research I have beenable to work toward advancing clean energy production.”

Jeremy Stark PhD Candidate, Electrical and Computer Engineering

[ [

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