Wind energy projects

Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale.Wind can play important part in our growing energy needs. many European countries as well as Asian countries such as India , started to invest heavily on windmills.


According to wiki total generation of power using windmill reached 175 GW which is around 2 % of total usage. Even though it is small quantity ,but countries like Denmark produce 20% of its electricity using windmill so its contribution would rise.

Now days, compressed air energy is very popular.When we compress air into the cylinder , it stores lot of potential energy in itself which can be converted later into kinetic energy.

Projects related to wind energy :

Wind pump : Read more about it on Mechanical Projects Post

Wind mill Power generation System

What is Wind Power ?

How to build it ? 

Most of the information regarding Wind Power Generators are available at :

How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine ?
PVC pipe windmill Material Needed (pdf)
Build windmill using basic PVC pipe(pdf)
Build it Solar

Related PDF :

Hybrid Wind Solar Wind Power generation

Compressed Air Car

Highway Wind Turbines

Drip irrigation system using wind pump

Air Powered Bike

Pneumatic Projects

Pneumatic Transport System

Air Rocket

Vacuum and Power Brakes

DFIG

Jason Strandbeest

Light Weight Floating Wind Turbines

In the video given below there is example of windmill implementation in Western Texas :




Related  :

Mechanical Projects
Solar Energy Project Ideas
Hydropower Projects

Cogeneration Project

Cogeneration (also combined heat and power, CHP) is the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat. We all know that all power plants emit heat while producing electricity, this heat energy can be used for other purposes. Masnedø CHP power station in Denmark(Image shown below)  uses the same concept.In my opinion it is a great project for Mechanical Engineering students.Its use is not only limited to big power plants, it can be used in other places too, good example of that is: implementation of co-generation plant at Carnegie Mellon University about which you can search on internet.

At the time of global warming ,it is vital to improve efficiency of  our power plants,this can be done easily using this method.University of Gaziantep journal about Performance assessment of co-generation plants proves my point.
Coopers' Brewery uses this system to reduce its carbon footprint to 50 percent and at the same time double there production.




How cogeneration works ?





Even though companies started to implement co-generation in their plants , there is still lot to do in this field,for example there can be other ways to use this heat or how many other places this concept can be implemented.

Useful Resources :

Cogeneration for confectioners
MIT Cogeneration Project

Python Projects

Projects given below use python as there primary language. You can download python from Python official website. It is very popular language; even your favorite search engine google uses this language as its front end.

Recipe Management Systems:

Gourmet Recipe Manager is a recipe-organizer for GNOME that generates shopping lists and allows rapid searching of recipes. It imports mealmaster & mastercook files and exports webpages & other formats. Gourmet uses python, gtk and metakit.

Adimeal RMS : entirely written in python.Actualy is has a text UI and a graphical UI using the GNOME Desktop.

PDF-Shuffler is a small python-gtk application, which helps the user to merge or split pdf documents and rotate, crop and rearrange their pages using an interactive and intuitive graphical interface. It is a frontend for python-pyPdf.

Spells and Stuff is a Python based web roleplaying system, that allows a DM(Dungeon Master) to create potentially unlimited graphical worlds and will allow multiple players to graphically explore them via a standard web browser.

Cartoon Grabber : The aim of this small project is to create a nice, gtk-based comis strip viewer. Written in python, will allow to keep track of your favourite comic strips and manage them (store on your disk, etc.)

Board Games : You can build program which allows user to play games like checker , Scrabble .

Auction Site : Where people can auction on products in a way similar to ebay.

Spelling Checker : Program which check spellings using the user written dictionary.

Student Information System : You can write application where student complete information can be store such as his attendance,  marks , interests etc etc.

Advantage with Python :
It is very easy to learn and can be learned with the help of this online tutorial.


Related :

Final Year Computer Science Projects
Computer Engineering Project ideas
Java Project Ideas

Python Projects

Iphone Applications

Php Project

C++ Projects

Vacuum and Power Brakes

Vacuum brakes are one of the oldest braking system exist. It was first introduced and employed on the trains in the mid-1860s. The most simplest way to explain it is that it uses vacuum power to stop the train. These brakes have been improved significantly over the years.

Vacuum or power brakes are used in all most all the railways and modern day cars. It consists of five major components:

1.Break Pedal

2.Intake Manifold

3.Seal

4.Hinge and

5.Spring

How Vacuum brake works?

This system has two chambers, one is always filled with vacuum(first) and other one has either vacuum or atmospheric air(second). Their is a link between two chambers, so vacuum can transfer from first chamber to second.

When we push the break pedals, it opens up the second chamber seal, which allows atmospheric air to enter into the second chamber. This air exerts lot of pressure on the first chamber filled with vacuum which eventually push the brake fluid and stops the vehicle. I am embedding very important video which will help you understand exactly how it works.



This project is good for the case study purpose.I am giving you some helpful links below  :
 
How power brakes Works ?

How Vacuum brakes Works from African Railways ?

Brake System used in IR 

Railway Technical 

Heat transfer Projects

Introduction :

Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the transfer of thermal energy from one physical system to another.
The transfer of heat is normally from a high temperature object to a lower temperature object.Many students confuse heat transfer with the temperature,professor of IIS Bangalore wrote wonderful article about basics of heat transfer. Heat transfer is a result of first law of thermodynamics which states that energy can not be created or destroyed, it transfers from one state to another.

This video will help you to understand this concept further :



Projects : 
You can find students of Virginia projects at Virginia faculty page. We have already used this concept in many projects we have discussed before in this blog ex. Sterling engine project , which use transfer heat energy to mechanical energy for pushing piston.Although,it is very wide topic but I find two very interesting projects from Carnegie Melon University ,first is about Heat Transfer for Fluid Inside Pipes and second is about The Rate of Internal Heat Transfer of a Copper Coiled Pipe at Different Laminar Flows.

If you are interested in Thermodynamics Design , then you may find these project interesting :
Automotive Air-Conditioning System
Evaluate the efficiency and practicality of a heat pump system used in warm climates.

Pneumatic projects

Pneumatic is a branch of engineering, which deals with the study and application of use of compressed or pressurized air to affect mechanical motion.This technology use energy produced by compressed air engines. Projects on Pneumatic are both productive and informational.
List of Projects :

Air Cars
Air Bike

Vacuum cleaner

These vacuum cleaners are also know as air powered cleaners. They are powered by the air and their application is based on pneumatic concept.

Pneumatic or pneumatic vacuum cleaners are a specialized form of models that hook up to compressed air. They commonly can accommodate both wet and dry soilage, a useful feature in industrial plants and manufacturing facilities.

Important things to know :

Compressed air is air which is kept under a certain pressure, usually greater than that of the atmosphere.This air pressure is controlled using pressure regulator which is a valve that automatically cuts off the flow of a liquid or gas at a certain pressure. Regulators are used to allow high-pressure fluid supply lines or tanks to be reduced to safe and/or usable pressures for various applications.

Useful PDF :

Pneumatic Systems 

Pneumatic operated robotic arm

As its name suggest, this robotic arm use compressed air pressure to move itself.

Automatic thread cutting machine

Tail Lift

Bending machine

Magnetic separator

Magnetic separation is a process in which magnetically susceptible material is extracted from a mixture using a magnetic force.For example in the case of iron ore, we separate iron from waste using magnetic separation.



Can Crusher

This machine is used for crushing cans. If you can build can crusher which use compressed air energy, it can be very useful project in real life too.

Useful Post:
Can crushing Experiment


 
Metal Foil cutting Machine

Its name suggest what this machine does. This machine is used in almost all manufacturing industries and it consumes lot of electricity.In this project you will need to power it using pneumatic system.



Pneumatic Tubes or Transport System:

What is Pneumatic tubes ?

A pneumatic motor or compressed air engine is a type of motor which does mechanical work by expanding compressed air.
Air cars

Useful Links
Futuristic Transportation

Related Pdf
Pneumatic grain conveyor
Powder delivery system

Air powered bike

I get this idea from Planet Mechanics show of National Geographic Channel . I have embedded a clip of that show below. This project uses a similar concept as of air cars because both of them use compressed air as a fuel.

Concept :
In this project we compress gas into a cylinder. Compress air behaves like a spring,. more it get compressed, more force it generates. We can use this force for doing any mechanical work and most of the pneumatic projects use this concept.

How much it cost ?

It would not cost much if you have old bicycle and one cylinder in a scrap. All the other items such as engine (Which can be unrepairable motor pump  ) , pipe , valve are cheap and easily available in market.


How its work ?

Its upon you , how you want to use compressed air energy , but I suggest you to use old piston method which was used in steam engines, only difference is, here we use compressed air to push the piston downwards as shown in Video :



Related Projects :

Automobile Projects