NEWS
Winning First Place in the Chemical Engineering Projects Category Two Students at UoB Design Innovative Alternatives to Biofuel Production Reactors
Sakhir – University of Bahrain (Khadijah Abdusalem)
22 August 2023
Two students from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the College of Engineering in the University of Bahrain (UoB) designed innovative alternatives to micro-reactors for the production of biofuel (biodiesel), through recycling industrial materials.
The two students in the chemical engineering program, Omar Ibrahim Yateem and Hani Mohammed Ahmed, won the first place in the graduation projects of the chemical engineering program for the second semester for their project, which was supervised by the associate professor in the Department, Dr. Hayat Abdullah Youssef, as the main supervisor, and the associate professor in the same department, Dr. Zainab Ali Mohammed Redha, as the assistant supervisor.
The winning project was titled “Performance Analysis of Tesla-Shaped Micro-Reactor Designs for Biodiesel Production: Experimental and CFD Simulation”, which aimed to design innovative alternatives to microreactors, in order to improve the mixing efficiency of reactants and biodiesel productivity, through a practical comparison of laboratory experiments and computer simulations of these reactors and micromixers.
The project is the first of its kind to investigate the impact of different innovative designs of Tesla-shaped micro-reactors on the productivity of biofuels – using used cooking oil – and on the efficiency of mixing the reactants, as the vision of the project coincides with economic visions. And with the increase in environmental awareness, the use of biofuels as an energy source – instead of fossil fuels – has become a necessity to achieve sustainability and contribute to reducing environmental pollution.
The researchers presented unique designs for precise mixing devices, in which the percentage of biofuel production reaches 94.5%, while the mixing rate reaches 99.9%, with fewer Tesla units. In addition, the improved Tesla-shape takes less time in the CNC machine, thus reducing the overall manufacturing cost of these precision devices.
The students, Yateem and Ahmed, determined and measured the performance and mixing efficiency of the microreactors by using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) program, and verified it through laboratory results, in addition to analyzing and processing the moving designs of the microreactors.
Among the main steps of the study was choosing the main variables in the production of biodiesel, such as the ratio of alcohol to used cooking oil, catalyst concentration, temperature, and flow rate for both used cooking oil and alcohol. Fixed values for such variables were adopted based on a previous study conducted by a number of UoB students, while the designs of various micro-reactors were changed and innovated based on an in-depth analysis of the impact of fluid mechanics factors in the reactors on the material mixing ratio and biofuel productivity.
The students at the College of Engineering presented 71 distinguished graduation projects at the graduation projects exhibition, which were completed by 199 students in the College for the academic year 2022/2023. The projects covered various engineering issues, such as: bridge and highway designs and their requirements, robots, power generation, as well as improving energy efficiency and waste treatment of all kinds.
