News Story

2014 Annual Wrap Up

news story image

Student Accomplishments

  • Ph.D. student Harish Ganapathy presented “Enhanced carbon capture in a multiport microscale absorber,” at the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition in San Diego, CA.

  • Ph.D. student Suxin Qian was awarded one of two $25,000 annual GDF-SUEZ Chuck Edwards Memorial Fellowships.

  • Ph.D. student Long Huang received a scholarship from the AEE Baltimore Chapter.

New Consortium Members

Big Feats

  • CEEE hosted the International Sorption Heat Pump Conference from March 31 to April 2. More than 200 people took part from 24 different nations and 127 papers were presented.  CEEE student volunteers helped make the conference a big success.

  • Eight students, six faculty members, and one alumnus from CEEE presented 18 papers in the heat pump technology conferences at Purdue University this summer. Long Huang presented three papers (more than anyone else), and one of his papers (“Design Optimization OF Variable Geometry Microchannel Heat Exchangers”) was the second place finisher for the Best Paper Award.

  • Led by Prof. Michael Ohadi, UMD was awarded a research project sponsored by ARPA-e on a project focusing on the impact of additive manufacturing on the design of advanced heat exchangers for enhanced air side heat transfer.

  • Prof. Michael Ohadi’s team won the 2013 American Society of Mechanical Engineers Advanced Energy Systems Division Best Paper Award for their paper titled “ESFuelCell2013-18394 Experimental Investigation of Advanced Microscale Reactors for Enhanced Carbon Capture and Natural Gas Sweetening Applications”.

  • Yunho Hwang is a new member of the editorial board for the journal Energy.  He serves as the General Program Chair for the upcoming American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 2015 9th International Conference of Energy Sustainability. He also delivered the keynote speech—"New Cooling Technologies"—at the 2014 International Symposium on Refrigeration Technology held in Zhuhai, China in October.

Big Fun

About 30 staff, students, faculty, and family members from Dr. Radermacher’s team went camping at Deep Creek Lake and enjoyed hiking, water sports, and horseback riding, and the camaraderie that comes from breaking away from offices and labs. Dr. Radermacher left early upon receiving word that two new grandchildren were about to be born.

Hail and Farewell

  • Hongzhou Dong joined CEEE as a Faculty Research Assistant to conduct research in computational fluid dynamics, simulation, and software development for ISOC.

  • Prasad Naraharishetty joined ISOC to develop user interface and algorithms, providing user support, and benchmarking commercial packages and platforms.

  • Master’s degree student Michael Cristiano successfully defended his thesis “Design and Experimentation of Manufacturable Solid Desiccant Wheel Assisted Separate Sensible and Latent Cooling Packaged Terminal Air Conditioning System” and then continued on to his assignment in the U.S. Navy.

  • M.S. candidate Jared Levy successfully defended his thesis entitled “Simulation and Analysis of Energy Consumption for an Energy-Intensive Academic Research Building”. He now works as a marine engineer for Gibbs & Cox, Inc.

  • Harish Ganapthy successfully completed his Ph.D., and is now working as a thermal packaging engineer for Intel. His dissertation was entitled “Enhanced Gas- Liquid Absorption Utilizing Micro Structured Surfaces”.

  • Sahil Popil successfully completed his Ph.D. and started a new job with CEEE sponsor, Emerson Climate Technologies. His dissertation was titled “Performance Enhancement of Heat Exchanger Coolers with Evaporative Cooling”.  

  • Abdullah Alabdulkarem graduated in May and is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia.  His Ph.D. dissertation was “Efficiency Enhancement for Natural Gas Liquefaction with CO2 Capture and Sequestration through Cycles Innovation and Process Optimization”.

  • Ryan Kennett, Dana Savage, and Sarah Troch joined CEEE as Master's students this year.  Daniel Bae, Rohit Dhumane, Zhenning Li, Alireza Pesaran, Ye Tao, and Xiang Zhang joined CEEE for the Ph.D. program in 2014.

  • Haruyuki Matsuda, a research engineer from the new CEEE sponsor, Kobe Steel is here for one year as a visiting researcher.   Cha Sik Park, an associate professor at Hoseo University (South Korea) is now working here during his one year sabbatical.

  • Interns Yu Zhang and Yuhang Fang returned to China after a successful two-month internship working on optimization experiments to continue their studies at Tsinghua University.

  • Student Exchange Program student Daniel Wisniewki completed his six-month internship in the Heat Pump Lab, and returned home to Poland to continue his studies.

  • We welcomed Francesca Pascual and Alan Dabre to CEEE as new student hourly workers.  Francesca helps Mary Baugher with the newsletter and archiving, and Alan helps out Dr. Aute in MOC.

 

Published December 3, 2014