Ahmed ElSawy | Tennessee Technological University (original) (raw)

Papers by Ahmed ElSawy

Frontiers in Energy Research

This paper investigates the use of waste vegetable oil (WVO) for production of biodiesel. The stu... more This paper investigates the use of waste vegetable oil (WVO) for production of biodiesel. The study explores the improvement of biodiesel production using ultrasonic mixing to achieve high yields. Different oil streams, including virgin canola oil and WVO, were used as the raw material for the transesterification processes. These oils had different fatty acid contents as a result of environmental or previous processing conditions. The impact of free fatty acid (FFA) content on the resulting yield was assessed. It was demonstrated that the yield was influenced by production parameters such as reaction time, reaction temperature, molar/volume ratios of oil to alcohol, catalyst amount, and mechanical mixing. This was accomplished by automating the biodiesel production from WVO, thereby achieving improved processing and requiring minimal direct human involvement. A biodiesel production apparatus was developed with a Raspberry Pi 3 microcomputer to control the process. The particular cho...

As the population of the planet Earth increases, the need for affordable housing becomes a paramo... more As the population of the planet Earth increases, the need for affordable housing becomes a paramount issue in construction. This need is further complicated by the rising cost of basic building materials due to the depletion of natural resources throughout the world. These problems have caused the construction industry to refocus its attention on the elimination of waste through a comprehensive strategy to: (a) reclaim and recycle these resources into usable materials, and (b) develop products and markets in construction for recycled materials through research and testing to prove their integrity. The purpose of this study is to determine the performance characteristics of using solid waste materials (i.e., fiberglass, fly ash, and spent foundry sand) as substitute materials in the matrix and reinforcement of the standard Fas wall wood/concrete block. Specifically, it focuses on the use of waste fiberglass (as a substitute reinforcement for mineralized wood chips), fly ash and spent...

There is a strong need in the USA to decrease dependency on fossil fuels and implement a sustaina... more There is a strong need in the USA to decrease dependency on fossil fuels and implement a sustainable energy policy. Many efforts are underway to power vehicles and equipment with alternative energy sources. One alternative fuel that has gained much popularity in the past few years is biodiesel. Biodiesel can be produced using virgin vegetable oil or waste vegetable oil (WVO) as the raw material. WVO is readily available and typically inexpensive; however the process to convert WVO into usable biodiesel is time consuming, requires a human operator to run the system, and necessitates a human to perform a chemical titration for each batch of biodiesel produced. Due to these requirements, a typical biodiesel processor requires much operator interaction which has not yet been eliminated by existing ―automated‖ systems. Groups of senior design students were engaged in the design, production, and testing of an automated biodiesel processor. The source of the WVO for this project is the uni...

2001 Annual Conference Proceedings

Even tough there are various kinds of CAD/CAM packages available on the market, there is no syste... more Even tough there are various kinds of CAD/CAM packages available on the market, there is no system developed for the basic estimations of machining processes, such as cutting time, material removal rate (MRR), feed rate, and spindle speed. Having such a system is important for a number of reasons: cost estimation, life cycle analysis, machine programming, tool and workpiece selection, production rate, and number of machining steps etc. In this paper, a knowledge-based tool (KBT), which is still under development, has been presented. The current development and its implementation are also given in the present paper.

The objective of this study was to build a thermally efficient solar water heater. The receiver p... more The objective of this study was to build a thermally efficient solar water heater. The receiver plate was constructed from an air conditioner radiator, and consisted of an array of serpentine tubes through which water was circulated. The presence of high density corrugated fins attached to the tubes increased the absorption of incident solar radiation. The flat plate collector was enclosed by double glazing which admitted solar radiation and minimized convection heat transfer losses to the environment. The shell of the collector was insulated to reduce conduction losses. A numerical model of flat plate solar collector thermal performance was developed and is likewise described in this paper. The model predicted the useful heat transfer to the water using an energy balance approach. An experimental program that was devised to verify the accuracy of the thermal performance model. Under certain circumstances close agreement was obtained between model predictions and experimental measur...

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF …, 2002

ISMAIL FIDAN and AHMED ELSAWY Department of Manufacturing and Industrial Technology, Tennessee Te... more ISMAIL FIDAN and AHMED ELSAWY Department of Manufacturing and Industrial Technology, Tennessee Tech University, 920 North Peachtree Avenue, Cookeville, TN 38505-5003, USA. E-mail: ifidan@tntech.edu Although there are many kinds of computer-...

2003 Annual Conference Proceedings

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings

Rapid Prototyping Journal

Purpose Wire + arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) uses existing welding technology to make a part ... more Purpose Wire + arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) uses existing welding technology to make a part from metal deposited in an almost net shape. WAAM is flexible in that it can use multiple materials successively or simultaneously during the manufacturing of a single component. Design/methodology/approach In this work, a gas metal arc welding (GMAW) based wire + arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) system has been developed to use two material successively and fabricate bimetallic additively manufactured structure (BAMS) of low carbon steel and AISI 316L stainless steel (SS). Findings The interface shows two distinctive zones of LCS and SS deposits without any weld defects. The hardness profile shows a sudden increase of hardness at the interface, which is attributed to the migration of chromium from the SS. The tensile test results show that the bimetallic specimens failed at the LCS side, as LCS has lower strength of the materials used. Originality/value The microstructural features and...

Renewable Energy and Power Quality Journal

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings, 2000

One of the possible key organic contaminants for drinking water sources is humic acid; in particu... more One of the possible key organic contaminants for drinking water sources is humic acid; in particular this contaminant is usually found in lakes, rivers and other surface-based drinking water sources [1]. Pulsed Corona Discharges (PCD) has been shown to be effective in the degradation of organic molecules of relative small size such as, for example, phenol. Larger contaminants such as dairy products (mostly proteins-based) also have been shown that can be degraded by the use of high oxidation methods such as PCD (Ibanez, 2004). An example of the next type of contaminant in increasing sizes is the humic acid; preliminary analysis (Camp, 2004) showed minor degradation but not all the parameters were studied. In this research, we focus on a combination of pH, conductivity, and physical aspects of the corona-generating system such as input power, frequency, and electrode distance. Furthermore, the addition of titanium dioxide nanoparticles was also investigated. In order to conduct the a...

Drinking water can be contaminated by organic contaminants (humic acid) and as such can pose pote... more Drinking water can be contaminated by organic contaminants (humic acid) and as such can pose potential health hazards when ingested. The use of high oxidation methods to eliminate contaminants from drinking water or fluids is an attractive and efficient approach because it is a new technology. Earlier work (Sharma et al., 1993) has shown the elimination of highly toxic contaminants such as phenol and more recently fumic traces (Smith, 2004) and proteins from water fluents (Ibaez, 2004). Organic contaminant such as the humic acid is tested experimentally to determine the ability of pulsed corona power system in degrading the humic acids and leading to a safe drinking product. The potential for humic acid degradation is examined over 45 minutes at each of five operational parameters varying energy and frequency (0.15 J/60 Hz, 0.15 J/120 Hz, 0.4 J/60 Hz, and 0.4 J/120 Hz) in a factorial design. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC), Ultraviolet-visible and the X-ray were used as analytical pa...

2015 5th International Youth Conference on Energy (IYCE), 2015

Current Advances in Mechanical Design & Production IV, 1989