FROM A TRADITIONAL COMBUSTION COURSE TO AN ALTERNATIVE AND RENEWABLE ENERGY COURSE

摘要

With the increased interest and focus on sustainability and energy independence, utilization of renewable energy resources has been receiving a lot of attention. A new course on Alternative and Renewable Energy has been developed in the School of Engineering at Grand Valley State University as both a new technical elective course in thermofluids area as well as an alternative to the existing Combustion Applications course. While this course emphasizes alternative and renewable energy sources and applications, it also encompasses the basics of combustion of hydrocarbon fuels that is not covered in the single compulsory four credit hour thermodynamics course in the mechanical engineering curriculum. In this sense it serves a unique purpose of filling in an important gap in the curriculum. The laboratory used for the combustion course has been enhanced and transformed to be a Combustion and Energy Applications Laboratory. The experimental course that was developed and offered for the first time in fall 2008 tries to utilize to the maximum extent the existing laboratory and the essential and relevant topics of the combustion course, and builds on these with topics and experiments on alternative and renewable energy in forming a coherent course. In this regard, new equipment including a “Hy-Expert? Instructor Fuel Cell System, portable selfcontained educational training units for solar photovoltaic, wind energy, and hydrogen energy have been purchased and added to the lab to complement the existing equipment. Other additions that are under way for enhancing this course are also described in this paper. . This paper also discusses how the course and the laboratory were developed, the difficulties encountered, feedback obtained from the students as well as the overall experience and recommendations of the instructor.