Kilnadegga Nights: The Ballad of Bricky Bobby
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Black carbon pollution from the nearly 8,000 brick kilns in Bangladesh claims the lives of over 5,000 people annually. This pollution can largely be attributed to the inefficient combustion caused by scoops of coal being dumped into the kilns intermittently, as is the current practice. The coal smolders and burns inefficiently, producing black carbon particulates. Continuous coal feeding would increase combustion efficiency and help reduce fuel consumption. Last year’s ME170 team created a functional continuous coal feeder prototype that delivered coal at a steady rate through a rotating mechanism. Our team focused on making refinements to the continuous coal feeder prototype, placing particular emphasis on motor performance. In addition to improving the continuous coal feeder prototype, our team also explored a rotary valve mechanism after some initial concerns regarding operation reliability and high-volume production. Our team explored methods to increase battery life through motor characterization and testing. We also developed a method to transport our rotating wheel mechanism that, with coal included, could weigh up to 60 pounds. We found that an 18 RPM motor could run continuously for 3.6 to 9.9 days with a 7.7-amp hour battery while operating our mechanism without coal output. Furthermore, our cart transport system proved to be reliable for moving our entire barrel and coal mechanism from one porthole to another in less time than our target of 1 minute. Finally, our rotary valve mechanism proved to be functional while reducing material cost and adding a single custom cast part.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | March 21, 2022; 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Argueta, Edwin |
|---|---|
| Author | Blackburn, Danny |
| Author | Duarte, Luis |
| Author | Nguyen, Brian |
| Editor | Su, Lester |
| Editor | Hiss, Eli |
| Researcher | Luby, Stephen |
| Sponsor | Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment |
Subjects
| Subject | Mechanical engineering |
|---|---|
| Subject | Bangladesh |
| Subject | Coal feeding |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Report |
Bibliographic information
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Argueta, E., Blackburn, D., Duarte, L., and Nguyen, B. (2022). Kilnadegga Nights: The Ballad of Bricky Bobby. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/nx161vc3745
Collection
ME170 Mechanical Engineering Design
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