A summary of my professional engineering experience in real-world innovative settings.
I have recently started working in the Power & Energy division at the University of Dayton Research Institute, with the Aerospace Product Support & Applied Digital Systems group.
While I have not yet had to opportunity to contribute to as many projects as I have at Fuels & Combustion, I can tell you what to expect in the future:
I will be contributing to the development of a mobile petroleum desulfurization unit to convert high sulfur jet fuels into low sulfur diesel fuels.
I will be gaining experience by helping contribute to the design of extraction towers, catalytic reaction design, recycle processes, process flow diagrams, and more!
For the rest of the Spring semester (present - May), the unit will be designed and parts will be ordered. Only theoretical design and project development will happen during this time.
My internship is continuing through the Summer, when the unit will be constructed and the actual chemical processes I'll help design can be tested!
So far I've developed the technical data package draft for the unit’s design. The technical data package contains information about manufacturing processes, chemical processes, and safety requirements.
Pictured next to me is the previous design of the extraction towers that extract the sulfur from the jet fuels.
This section of my work experience will be dynamically updated as I learn new things and accomplish project goals, so stay tuned.
I have obtained great amounts of industry knowledge and experience throughout my ongoing internship with the Fuels & Energetic Materials division of the University of Dayton Research Institute.
I have had the privilege and opportunity to contribute to many research projects regarding aviation turbine fuels (jet fuels).
I have analyzed gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and relative permittivity data of over 70+ international jet fuels to correlate and model various fuel properties, in some cases reviewing and correcting data to increase accuracy of analysis by up to 30%.
In one project, I used advanced simulated distillation software to generate over 100 distillation points for each jet fuel. To verify the quality and accuracy of these points, multiple software packages were used to adhere to interlab study reproducibility standards.
For another project, I tested the effects on dielectric constant of various fuel additives such as FSII, CI/LI, and SDA. The dielectric constant is likely used on modern aircraft to perform onboard fuel gauging.
The findings were quite revolutionary, and I'll be proudly presenting them at the University of Dayton's Stander Symposium this coming spring. After the symposium, the presentation will be available under the Other page of this website.
I collaborated with small teams of around 4 - 7 other research professionals to deliver accurate results, meeting and exceeding project deadlines.