For my thesis, I worked on an off grid wastewater treatment system that would process effluent from the leather tanning industries. I chose to work on this project as it seemed as though I thought that I can genuinely help people with the designed system.

After researching the most effective methods of wastewater treatment, I created CAD models of the parts used. The system is broken up into three difference stages. The primary stage is removal of the large particles in the water. Using a mixing tank and a sedimentation tank, suspended solids can be removed through coagulation and flocculation with the coagulant of choice being aluminum sulfate as it is cheap and effective.

The secondary component of the wastewater treatment system is a way to remove heavy metals from wastewater. This can be done through the concept of photoreduction. The ion Chromium (VI) is the most toxic chemical in tannery wastewater and this method can reduce this ion into its less toxic state Chromium (III). Using titanium dioxide as a photocatalyst, the solar radiation of the sun can be harnessed to increase the rate at which the redox reaction happens.

The tertiary stage in the system is the disinfection stage. The system utilizes an activated carbon filter to remove any microbes in the effluent as well as adsorb any additional chromium that was not reduced in the previous stage.

The goal of this project was to determine if increasing friction between a surgical bone plate and the bone would effectively decrease the movement and slipping of the screws. A bone plate is used a cast that is screwed directly to the bone for more serious injuries.

In order to increase the friction, we thought the best and most cost-effective method of doing so was to add grooves or textures to the area that made contact with the bone. After conducting research, three different textures were ultimately decided on for their uniaxial friction coefficients.

With the textures designed, all that was left was to perform both tensile and dynamic testing. To ensure that there were no outside sources of error, we designed a single screw plate with an attachable handle to both the tensile and dynamic testing machine. We chose to make the single hole plate to prove the initial theory as well as determine the effectivity of a single screw rather than the whole plate with six screws.

The goal of this project was to design a system that allowed a weight to move from the floor up to three feet in the air and pushed onto a platform. We began working on preliminary sketches our designs; we needed a way to bring the weight up and a way to force the weight onto the platform.

While most people would design a scissor lift for this particular application, we came at this problem with a larger emphasis on creating the most cost-effective system that we could. So instead, we decided to utilize a series of pulleys to achieve our goals. The pulleys would pull a plate where the weights lied and a mechanical arm that would push the weight off the plate and onto the platform.

For this project, we were tasked to create a physical model of a bot that would move based on an arduino remote control. The two main aspects of the project were the CAD modeling and the Arduino programming for the remote control.

For the CAD model design, I created a chassis that would theoretically hold all the electronics and the Arduino. In addition to this, a steering system needed to be designed and I chose to go with the Crank Shaft steering system. The propulsion system is utilizing an air piston connected to a one way bearing to ensure that the bot would only move forward.