Current Research
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Research Archive |
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Portable Solar Concentrator Omar Carrasquillo In the solar cooker industry, portability is highly desired because it gives more flexibility to its users. Unfortunately, many solar cookers often require a large, bulky solar concentrator to increase efficiency. The goal of this project is to design and manufacture a light-weight, portable solar concentrator that can be easily transported and assembled, and can function for extended periods of time with minimal tracking required. |
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Ocean Renewable Energy Storage (ORES) Greg Fennell Offshore, floating wind turbines offer promise of greater capacity factor (>50%) with more powerful generators than are currently offered for on-shore wind turbines. The deeper water available far offshore, over the horizon, also offers the potential for energy storage. We are designing large diameter (15m-35m) concrete spheres that can be used in conjunction with floating wind turbines to store excess wind energy for more consistent load to shore and to provide for peak power demands. Additionally, for offshore oil platforms, the sphere design offers potential as safe hydrocarbon storage for hurricane shut-in procedures. |
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Concentrated Solar Power on Demand (CSPonD) Folkers Rojas As the world energy consumption increases, companies and governments alike are looking for renewable forms of energy. Concentrated Solar Power on Demand (CSPonD) is a project whose aim is to receive and store solar energy in the form of a molten salt bath. The molten salt bath can be heated by concentrated solar energy during the day using a heliostat array on the side of a mountain or cliff. Part of the goal is to provide continuous 24/7 power output from the high temperature salt bath. CSPonD can serve as a means to address the growing demand for greener energy sources. |
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Concentrated Solar Power on Demand (CSPonD) Danny Codd The CSPonD team is focused on developing next-generation concentrating solar power (CSP) capture, storage and conversion technologies. Working under the guidance of Prof. Alex Slocum with a talented team of students and faculty from MIT's Nuclear, Mechanical and Chemical Engineering departments, our goal is to make cost-effective utility scale solar power generation a reality. |
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Vibration Energy Harvesting A Zachary Trimble Most mechanical systems produce some form of unwanted mechanical vibration. The kinetic energy represented by the mechanical vibration must be produced by the machine, but in most cases is not useful and thus represents an energy lost from the mechanical system. Vibration energy harvesting attempts to recover the vibrational kinetic energy by transducing the energy from the mechanical domain to the electrical domain. The group is investigating several ideas to help increase the effectiveness of proof mass based electromagnetic harvesters. One major goal of the research effort is to quantify the amount of energy that can be harvested as a function of the properties of the input vibration. A second major goal of the research effort is to produce a proof-of-concept level prototype that is able to harvest a reasonable target power from a given "real-world" vibration reference. |
