- BioEnergy
- Offshore Wind Energy
- Environmental Sustainability
BioEnergy
The goal of the Bioenergy subproject is to enable the production of 3rd generation hydrocarbon transportation biofuels from bioenergy crops that are grown using treated PW from the fracking process. This subproject has two primary FAs: (1) determine the potential for treated PW from shale fracking to grow perennial grasses as feed-stocks, and (2) develop an energy-efficient recyclable catalytic process for the transformation of biomass to bio-crude oil, which can be refined to liquid transportation fuels. Dr. Amarasekara is the group leader for this subproject.
Offshore Wind Energy
The goal of the Offshore Wind Energy subproject is to address key challenges in deep-sea floating offshore wind technologies. The subproject has three focus areas: (1) improve blade aerodynamics prediction by developing novel CFD-based corrected BEM models, (2) develop probabilistic model and analyze structural uncertainty with life-cycle reliability analysis, and 3) data science of damage risk assessment with big-data-aided structural damage detection of the system. Dr. Huque is the group leader and the technical coordinator of CEES, Dr. Doeun Choe is the co-lead for this subproject.
Environmental Sustainability
The goal of the Environmental Sustainability subproject is to develop novel environmental technologies and statistical forecasting methods that enhance the sustainability of fossil fuel energy and renewable energy sources. This subproject has three primary focus areas: (1) treat shale oil & gas produced water to produce clean water for irrigating energy crop and perennial grass, (2) model climate change to analyze the impact of climate change on the Gulf Coast region and its air quality, and (3) evaluate environmental impacts of all processes/products studied at CEES using life cycle assessment. Dr. Kommalapati is the group leader for this subproject.
