The team analyzed the complexity, efficiency, economics and environmental impact of batch and continuous ibuprofen-manufacturing processes to determine which was superior.

Continuous production of pharmaceuticals has advantages over traditional batch processing, which is slow due to downtime spent cleaning and performing quality checks after production cycles. Continuous manufacturing, however, sends materials through a nonstop process until the final product is completed.

Continuous processing is faster, more efficient, and safer due to reduced human involvement. After initial investment in a continuous pharmaceutical production process, this method could be a less expensive way to produce pharmaceuticals, with the potential for more affordable products.

Early production facilities take crude oil from wells and process it to meet environmental and standard specifications. The goal of this project is to design such a facility for two wells that extract light and heavy crude from an oil field in Batman, Turkey.

The facility designed uses several tools to remove oil contaminants such as water, basic sediments, and sulfur. The first stage of the process designed by the team separates crude straight from a well into natural gas, water and oil.

The oil is then heated to reduce its viscosity and mixed with fresh water to dilute the salt concentration. This mixture is passed through an electrostatic coalescer that uses an electric field to polarize and separate the water and salt, which allows the crude to meet basic sediment and water specifications. Oil then goes to a stripping column where nitrogen is bubbled through it to remove hydrogen sulfide. The crude is cooled before storage and transportation.

The aim is to design an unmanned aircraft that can take off vertically and observe small areas. The team’s aircraft, configured as a flying wing and lifting body, takes off and lands vertically, hovers, and can fly long distances efficiently.

Wingtip motors and propellers move the plane horizontally, and transition to vertical to supplement the four central fans that provide most of the vertical thrust during hover. The fans are shut down during horizontal flight for better overall aerodynamics. The aircraft weighs a kilogram, has a wingspan of about 1.25 meters, carries a payload of 100 grams, and can fly for 20 minutes.

Equipping the aircraft with a camera linked to a ground station makes it suitable for missions such as area surveillance for reach and rescue and monitoring localized fires.

The sponsor asked the team to develop the mechanical design of the main landing gear for the ClipperSpirit amphibious seaplane, a high-wing, 30-seat turboprop regional airliner in which the main gear retracts into a wing-mounted engine nacelle.

Project goals include designing the configuration of the main gear; sizing the components of the gear; determining the kinematic definition of the extension and retraction of the gear; determining the internal structural loads absorbed by the gear structure, the oleo shock strut and tires; and determining the transmitted loads to the wing mount.

The gear design meets sponsor and FAA certification requirements. Analytical design work was demonstrated and tested by building a one-tenth-scale model of the gear.

Highwalls are the unexcavated step-like faces of exposed earth in open-pit mines. The purpose of the project is to perform a geological analysis of various highwalls and design a blast pattern for a copper mine 64 miles southeast of Phoenix.

Using lidar and mining-oriented computer-aided design software, 3-D representations were created to analyze various aspects of the mine, including geological characteristics and how they affect highwall stability. Results were compared to projected mine plans versus actual mining results.

Using the analytical data, the team designed an optimal blast pattern that accounted for blast efficiency and areas of geological instability while conforming to the sponsor’s mine plan requirements.

The team’s objective is to design a decline for the University of Arizona’s San Xavier Mine, a student-run mining laboratory, according to Mine Safety and Health Administration’s safety codes. The purpose of the decline is to create opportunities for partnerships between the University of Arizona and mining companies.

A decline is a sloping underground opening for machine access from surface to level. To hold the largest equipment, the decline must have entrances and throughways of 22 feet high and 27 feet across. For optimal equipment performance, the overall slope grade must be no greater than 10 percent. Support, ventilation and mine design were all completed on mine software.

Underground laboratories were designed adjacent to the decline to offer locations for research. A tailings pile was designed and constructed to hold the moved earth in accordance with all safety standards.

Tin is commonly used to produce alloys, solder, and coatings that protect against weathering and corrosion. The goal of this project was to determine the chemical, mineral and metallurgical characteristics of a Brazilian tin mine ore in order to remediate the sponsor’s processing plant.

The mine is already running and equipped with the main tools for extraction and concentration of tin ore, but wants to increase throughput via remediation or optimization, depending on what is economically feasible.

The team provided recommendations for method of extraction, processing plant and possible tin recovery from tailings along with a mineral composition analysis.

The environmental impact of mine tailings dams ranges from merely taking up space to catastrophic failure leading to loss of life and destruction of property. The team sought a benign use for tailings, so they could be removed from mine sites and the environmental threat eliminated.

The team aimed to create an optimal mixture of mine tailings and industrial additives that would be strong enough to be used in the construction of pavement, bricks, and support material for existing tailings dams. The additives tested included fly ash, fiber, and steel rods.

The resulting product was considered successful if it was stronger and more economical than current construction materials. The team delivered brick-shaped and cylindrical samples made according to the optimal formula.

The aim of this project is to design a low-cost reconnaissance unmanned aircraft that can be deployed from rough terrain or environments with vertical obstacles. The team designed an unmanned aircraft that can be launched vertically with folded wings, which are deployed to transition the aircraft to conventional horizontal flight.

The unmanned aircraft can fly for 30 minutes and sends live images back to the user. It features fly-by-wire technology so the user can focus on the destination rather than the flight maneuvers to get there.

The goal of this project is to design a control system for micro air vehicles using microelectromechanical system, or MEMS, sensors. The design incorporates an analog-sensing circuit with an Arduino microcontroller embedded in a NACA 4412 airfoil wing section constructed from balsa wood and monokote film.

The circuit senses velocity and angle of attack using MEMS thermal flow sensors embedded in the outer surface of the wing section and uses a closed-loop feedback controller that changes the deflection angle of the wing’s elevon to control the pitch of the wing section.

The feedback controller is run using a control system designed in the Simulink interface of MATLAB. The wing section was mounted in a subsonic wind tunnel with flow speeds that do not exceed 20 meters per second to collect aerodynamic data.