Computational Catalysis and Materials Lab

Accelerate UConn is UConn’s National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Site and its mission is to catalyze the transition of new scientific discoveries and capabilities from the lab to the marketplace. Participating teams will receive an introduction to the most critical elements of the I-Corps Curriculum and Lean Launchpad methodology. Over the course of this virtual 4 week program, teams will learn how to determine the market opportunity for their product or technology.
Participants will learn how to:
Develop new ways to communicate the value of your product or technology
Understand the structure of the market you are entering
Develop strategies for generating demand for your product or technology
Identify next steps needed to launch your venture
Identify customers most likely to bring you revenue
Teams will receive:
4 weeks of training on the Business Model Canvas and Customer Discovery Process
Coaching from industry experts and access to next step resources
$1,000 to support customer discovery and development of minimum viable product
Help to identify team members

The Summer Session of Accelerate UConn is co-run with MIT. Accelerate UConn is open to all UConn undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty and staff.

Applications for the Summer 2022 cohort will close on Friday, July 8, 2022 at 11:59 p.m.
FIND MORE INFO AND APPLY HERE: https://accelerate.uconn.edu/apply/

Abstract: A critical factor in environmental degradation is the coupled problem of world population growth and waste management, including wastewater management. Making biodiesel from the FOG (fat, oil and grease) in the wastewater system is attractive for biofuel production, waste management and public health. High sulfur content is the biggest challenge for producing biodiesel from FOG.
The purpose of this dissertation is to develop affordable new methods to remove sulfur containing contaminants from the complex mixture of methyl esters comprising biodiesel. Biodiesel was produced from decanted brown grease using several combinations of acid and base catalysts in a two-step esterification/ transesterification process. Several desulfurization methods were tested including Raney Nickel catalyzed desulfurization, vacuum distillation desulfurization, extractive desulfurization (EDS) with liquid solvents, and adsorptive desulfurization (ADS) with solid sorbents.
In this dissertation, a new design method for vacuum distillation was introduced based on a pseudo-component approach that greatly reduces the effort required to characterize the raw biodiesel. Vacuum batch distillation was used to generate volatility and sulfur distribution data. A vapor/liquid equilibrium model was developed using 7 pseudo-components, each with an assigned sulfur content, to accurately simulate the batch distillation data. These pseudo-components were then used in the ASPEN software to design a continuous distillation system which is being deployed in an industrial application.
Then, β-cyclodextrin was found to be an excellent sorbent for desulfurizing biodiesel at ambient temperature and pressure. The equilibrium and kinetic behavior of the adsorption process were quantified with experimental measurements using the produced biodiesel and commercially available β-CD. A convection/diffusion model was developed to simulate a fixed bed adsorber. A 3-column design is presented based on the model results and compared with the sulfur reduction system based on vacuum distillation.

Webex link: https://uconn-cmr.webex.com/uconn-cmr/j.php?MTID=mf3a6a5e391c07056caedde3f0177dfbc