Tag: Chemical Engineering

Sea Grant Fellowship Opportunities

Sea Grant offers several fellowships for graduate and undergraduate students who are looking for:

  • An opportunity to learn more about coastal, Great Lakes and marine issues
  • A fantastic career building and networking opportunity
  • A chance to apply academic training in ecology, natural resources, policy, or law to real world issues
  • An insider view into how environmental policies are developed
  • A paid fellowship that can ease the transition from school to working life

For Graduate Students

These are paid 1-2 year fellowships that are typically pursued the year following graduation. The fellowships recruit students with a strong interest in marine and Great Lakes issues from a wide range of backgrounds, including, science, policy and law. Applications are due in late January or February.

New theses and dissertations available in the Library

The Graduate School is pleased to announce new theses and dissertations are now available in the J.R. van Pelt and Opie Library from the following programs:

  • Applied Ecology
  • Applied Natural Resource Economics
  • Biological Sciences
  • Chemical Engineering
  • Civil Engineering
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Environmental Engineering
  • Forest Ecology and Management
  • Forest Science
  • Geophysics
  • Materials Science and Engineering
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics
  • Physics
  • Rhetoric and Technical Communication

Carbon Foam: The Key Ingredient of a Better Battery?

A lighter, greener, cheaper, longer-lasting battery. Who wouldn’t want that?

Tech researchers are working on it. Actually, their design is a twist on what’s called an asymmetric capacitor, a new type of electrical storage device that’s half capacitor, half battery. It may be a marriage made in heaven.

Capacitors store an electrical charge physically and have important advantages: they are lightweight and can be recharged (and discharged) rapidly and almost indefinitely. Plus, they generate very little heat, an important issue for electronic devices. However, they can only make use of about half of their stored charge.

Batteries, on the other hand, store electrical energy chemically and can release it over longer periods at a steady voltage. And they can usually store more energy than a capacitor. But batteries are heavy and take time to charge, and even the best can’t be recharged forever.

Enter asymmetric capacitors, which bring together the best of both worlds. On the capacitor side, energy is stored by electrolyte ions that are physically attracted to the charged surface of a carbon anode. Combined with a battery-style cathode, this design delivers nearly double the energy of a standard capacitor.

Now, Tech researchers have incorporated a novel material on the battery side to make an even better asymmetric capacitor.

Their cathode relies on nickel oxyhydroxide, the same material used in rechargeable nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal hydride batteries. “In most batteries that contain nickel oxyhydroxide, metallic nickel serves as a mechanical support and a current collector,” said chemistry professor Bahne Cornilsen, who has studied nickel electrodes for a number of years, initially with NASA support. A few years ago, the team had a chance to experiment with something different: Cornilsen suggested replacing the nickel with carbon foam.

Carbon foam has advantages over nickel. “It’s lighter and cheaper, so we thought maybe we could use it as a scaffold, filling its holes with nickel oxyhydroxide,” said Tony Rogers, associate professor of chemical engineering.

Carbon foam has a lot of holes to fill. “The carbon foam we are using has 72 percent porosity,” Rogers said. “That means 72 percent of its volume is empty space, so there’s plenty of room for the nickel oxyhydroxide. The carbon foam could also be made of renewable biomass, and that’s attractive.”

But how many times can you recharge their novel asymmetric capacitor? Nobody knows; so far, they haven’t been able to wear it out. “We’ve achieved over 127,000 cycles,” Rogers said.

Other asymmetric capacitors have similar numbers, but none have the carbon-foam edge that could make them even more desirable to consumers.

“Being lighter would give it a real advantage in handheld power tools and consumer electronics,” said Rogers. Hybrid electric vehicles are another potential market, since an asymmetric capacitor can charge and discharge more rapidly than a normal battery, making it useful for regenerative braking.

The group has applied for a patent on its new technology. Chemical engineering professor Michael Mullins is also a member of the research team. Graduate students contributing to the project are PhD graduate Matthew Chye and PhD student Wen Nee Yeo of the chemical engineering department and MS student Padmanaban Sasthan Kuttipillai and PhD student Jinjin Wang of the chemistry department.

The research is funded by the US Department of Energy, the Michigan Universities Commercialization Initiative, the Michigan Tech Research Excellence Fund and the Michigan Space Grant Consortium.

by Marcia Goodrich, senior writer
Published in Tech Today

US Department of Energy Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowships

U.S. Department of Energy Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowships

The U.S. Department of Energy provides funding for students in their first or second year of graduate study in the fields of physical, engineering, computers, mathematics and life sciences. The fellowships are renewable up to four years. Students receive about $31,000 a year, as well as a $1,000 annual academic allowance for travel, research activities and attending conferences. Some students may also get matched funds for computer support up to $2,475.

New theses and dissertations available in the Library

The Graduate School is pleased to announce new theses and dissertations are now available in the J.R. van Pelt and Opie Library from the following programs:

  • Chemical Engineering
  • Chemistry
  • Civil Engineering
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Environmental Engineering
  • Forest Ecology and Management
  • Geological Engineering
  • Geology
  • Geophysics
  • Industrial Archaeology
  • Mathematical Sciences
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics

Department of Defense SMART

The Science, Mathematics And Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship for Service Program has been established by the Department of Defense (DoD) to support undergraduate and graduate students pursuing degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines.

Eligibility:

  • a U.S. citizen at time of application,
  • 18 years of age or older as of August 1, 2012,
  • able to participate in summer internships at DoD laboratories,
  • willing to accept post-graduate employment with the DoD,
  • a student in good standing with a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale (as calculated by the SMART application) and,
  • pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in one of the disciplines listed on the About SMART page.

Benefits:

  • Full tuition and education related fees (does not include items such as meal plans, housing, or parking)
  • Cash award paid at a rate of $25,000 – $41,000 depending on prior educational experience (may be prorated depending on award length)
  • Paid summer internships
  • Health Insurance reimbursement allowance up to $1,200 per calendar year
  • Book allowance of $1,000 per academic year
  • Mentoring
  • Employment placement after graduation

Graduate Student Represents Tech at National Poster Competion

Graduate student Michael Brodeur-Campbell, an IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) trainee, is representing the University in IGERT’s 2011 national poster competition. He is a PhD candidate in chemical engineering.  His poster is titled “Implications of the Renewable Fuels Standard on Upper-Midwest Land Use.”

IGERT is the National Science Foundation’s flagship interdisciplinary training program, educating PhD scientists and engineers by building on the foundations of their disciplinary knowledge with interdisciplinary training.

See Brodeur-Campbell’s poster at IGERT .

Finalists will be announced on Friday, May 6.