A Senior Design Project: The Design of an Experimental Carbon Dioxide Capture System for Enhancing Student Learning on Green Energy Manufacturing

The paper presents a senior design project that engages in educational activities to enhance learning on green energy manufacturing, including design, development, and testing of a CO2 capture system. The project is leveraged towards engineering student skills in CAD, material processing, instrumentation, and control. Students had to utilize manufacturing methods and techniques to create such a system for the future construction of manufacturing plants in industry. In order to achieve this, the amine material, Polyethylenimine (PEI), was used as adsorbent for the capture system in the project. PEI has the capability to bind to CO2 at room temperature and pressure and then release it when heated. The PEI was impregnated onto a porous material, fumed silica, in order to increase its surface area and adsorption capability. Air is passed over this adsorbent mixture using a vacuum pump, and with the use of CO2 sensors, the amount of CO2 adsorbed is accurately measured. The adsorption stage continues until the mixture is fully saturated; after which, a series of valves are toggled, and the regeneration stage begins. A prototype with conditioning electronics for sensors was constructed. Data acquisition software was written using LabVIEWTM and Arduino to measure environmental parameters including temperature, and CO2. For the sake of achieving the student learning outcomes, experiments were conducted, including sensor monitoring and process control. A concluding section discusses the student learning experiences during this project.