• Offer Profile
  • Welcome to the Center for Sustainable Energy Systems!

    Clarkson University has been engaged in energy research and education for over 30 years and our faculty's wide range of interests and activitives span disciplines from Engineering to Business. The Center provides a vehicle to bring these efforts together, exchange ideas with each other and generate new concepts for innovative, sustainable, collaborative projects at local, national and international levels. The center also supports the current efforts of the Institute for a Sustainable Environment (ISE) and the Center for Advanced Materials Processing (CAMP) and is closely linked to the Shipley Center for Innovation.

     
Product Portfolio
  • Energy Research at Clarkson University

  • The research interests of the faculty at Clarkson cover a wide spectrum of energy related areas.
      • Bioenergy

      • The conversion of biomass and organic waste into biofuels, including fuel oil and gasoline, for heat and power and the associated environmental impacts and social consequences is at the center of this research area. The abundance of biomass feedstocks in Northern New York and their potential to enhance regional economic development is substantial. The scope of research ranges from the conversion of biomass to fuels using thermo-chemical and biological means, such as biocatalytic microreactors, to sociology research to investigate the cause of farmers’ reluctance to adopt new energy technologies, such as anaerobic digestion, even when they provide economic benefits. Funding is for this research area has been provided by NYSERDA, NY Ag & Markets, USDA, and DOE. Collaborations with area farmers and CoolBrands, Inc, a local dairy processing plant, have been established to transfer research results to energy consumers/generators.
          • Wind Energy

              • Over 30 years ago Clarkson began conducting research in the use of vertical axis wind turbines as a source of local, rural energy. Today, researchers continue to investigate efficient strategies of extracting energy from the wind. The current research focus is on small turbines in the 1-100kW range, suitable for rural, residential and commercial applications. Several of the concepts utilize novel blade concepts to improve efficiency, reduce noise and enhance the low wind speed performance. Clarkson also tests small turbine prototypes at the Wind Turbine Test site in Potsdam. Future Energy Solutions of NY and Optiwind in CT are presently funding new design concepts, including a large scale turbine for commercial use.
              • Solar Energy

                  • While silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) devices have been the most widely used to date, their cost has led to significant interest in organic and organic-inorganic hybrid materials for use in PV devices. Such materials include various conducting polymers, quantum dots and semiconducting oxides, all of which have great potential for application in photo- and electrochemical devices (e.g. solar cells, sensors). In particular, PV systems based on materials that have well-ordered nanoscale features are highly sought after because they may increase efficiency through both improved charge separation and reduced excitation (positive and negative charge pairs) recombination. Current work is centered on creating potential low-cost, large-area PV devices through the use of well-ordered polymer nanocomposites. This should improve efficiency and enable devices that will be very think and can be printed onto flexible substrates. Work through Clarkson's Center for Advanced Materials Processing, collaborations with RPI and Corning Inc. and support from NYSERDA are helping to facilitate the work.
                  • Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Technologies

                  • The adoption of hydrogen for fuel cells will require a major infrastructure investment in a relatively short period of time. Extreme reactivity of hydrogen is recognized as a serious risk factor. Hydrogen safety is very different from gasoline safety due to its gaseous state, which leads to different modes of propagation. For safe transportation, distribution, and delivery, the hydrogen infrastructure must be monitored in real time. A MEMS sensor platform is being developed at Clarkson in collaboration with Cornell University to sense hydrogen concentrations and pressures for safety and storage needs.

                    Other projects include modeling and optimization of industrial solid oxide fuels cells, use of supercapacitors for improving the transient response of fuel cells and incorporation of new nano materials for both solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs).
                      • Geothermal Energy

                          • Geothermal energy has a great potential to provide a constant source of clean and reliable energy to both residential and commercial sectors of our society which consume a major portion of this nations energy demand. The implementation of geothermal energy is fairly simple since heat can be extracted from the earth’s surface at relatively shallow distances. In combination with structural pile foundations, geothermal energy can be used as an alternative energy solution for buildings. This type of ground-source heat extraction has existed for many years in Europe and Asia and has been a clean energy technology with a reported 50% CO2 emissions reduction and a decreased need for primary energy sources to operate [1]. It has been implemented not only in residential but multi-story commercial buildings as well. They are also beneficial since they can provide the structural and heating/cooling needs within one system and requiring less land usage and upfront costs. Geothermal energy piles are typically laid out in a pattern suitable to support the structure above and a typical cross section consists of concrete, steel reinforcement and high density polyethylene tubing. The tubing and steel reinforcement are arranged together before being lowered into a drilled shaft or borehole and filled with concrete. Once all piles are in place, the tubing is connected to a ground source heat pump which circulates a heat transferring medium throughout. As it is pumped the medium is heated by the ground through heat transfer processes and it is then pumped back into the building and distributed throughout. Energy pile foundations have the ability to use ground source heat and raise the relatively low temperature to a usable level.

                            The objective of this research project is to understand the thermo-hydro-mechanical effects of ground source heat pump systems on structural pile foundations. It is important to understand what effect heating and cooling cycles have on the behavior of concrete foundations in order to determine their long-term structural stability. Questions arise about the structural integrity of the pile when subjected to heating and cooling cycles since the pile will expand when heated and contract when cooled. The thermo-hydro-mechanical response of the soil-pile interface must be understood for better design practices and standards.

                            1. Banks, David. An Introduction to Thermogeology: Ground Source Heating and Cooling. Oxford: Blackwell Ltd, 2008. Print.
                            2. Brandl, H. "Energy foundations and other themo-active ground structures." Geotechnique 56 (2006): 81-122.
                          • Energy Efficiency

                          • The efficient use of energy, whether in copy machines or transportation vehicles, is critical to reducing costs and emissions. Energy efficiency is an economic resource and can be thought of as an alternate "fuel." For every watt of power saved in an end use appliance, approximately 6 watts of power is saved at a coal-fired station, along with the reductions in emissions associated with that power generation. Current projects include NYSERDA projects on the reduction of drag in trucks to improve fuel economy and the recovery of exhaust heat from trucks to generate power for vehicle use and a NYSTAR-Xerox project on thermal diffusion roller efficiency in copy machines.
                              • Energy Harvesting & Storage

                                  • As device sizes keep shrinking, the power requirement of the devices has been decreasing. In recent years, a trend to harvest energy from the environment rather than to use energy from a generator, power line or batter has been developing. Almost all the systems are subjected to various types of transient and vibrational excitations from the environment. In many cases, the level of vibrations would be sufficient to generate sufficient amounts of energy to drive piezoelectric motors and wireless communication devices. Faculty in this research group are collaborating with Cornell University faculty in the development of an array of self-tuning mechanical oscillators to be fabricated using MEMS technology and a project funded by the Transportation Research Board on the design and development of a generator using bridge vibrations to suppy power to sensors for bridge monitoring is underway.
                                  • Power Systems

                                      • The integration of intermittent renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, into the existing power grid present is particularly challenging. While a portion of this electricity is used in the stand-alone applications, much of this electricity is fed into the electric power grid. Efforts are underway to identify the benefits that distributed energy resources provide to grid operation, such as loss reduction and capacity deferment. Clarkson's High Voltage Laboratory's accelerated life testing capability is used to improve grid reliability. Recent support comes from NYSERDA and GE Energy Systems to develop accelerated life assessment tools for testing reliability and life assessment of complex industrial settings. It is hoped that tools for utility designers to maximize the reliability benefits of their upgrades, help identify critical or significant design or process characteristics that require special controls to prevent or detect failure modes, will be determined.
                                      • Energy Education

                                          • Energy Literacy: Empowers students to make thoughtful energy-related decisions, choices, and actions in their approach to everyday life

                                            Increasing the literacy of the general public on energy-related matters is critically important to promote conservation and efficiency and to ease the adoption of new energy technologies. Energy education activities range from middle school through PhD levels. K-12 outreach has included the development and implementation of units on energy systems (8th grade) and the hydrogen/biofuel economy (high school). These units have been taught by our own graduate students in partnership with local teachers. STEM workshops for teachers have also been established to provide energy-related education and ideas for the classroom.

                                            At the University level, a new undergraduate minor in Sustainable Energy Systems Engineering has been established. This minor emphasizes that all engineering disciplines are necessary to develop and assess technologies to both increase the efficiency of our energy use and advance renewable and alternative energy sources.

                                            Scholarly research activities such as the Energy Literacy Assessment Project include an ongoing effort to measure energy literacy among our students and assess the effectiveness of various K-12 curricular programs. A written survey has been developed that measures energy-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors according to defined content objectives for energy literacy. Current research uses the Energy Literacy Survey as a reliable, valid measure to examine energy literacy levels among a large sample of middle and high school students throughout New York State, and to investigate relationships between student gains in energy literacy and the energy education they experience at school. These initiatives have been funded by the NSF and NYSED.
                                          • Environmental Impacts of Energy Systems

                                              • Researchers have estimated that over 80% of our global air pollution arises from our energy systems. Researchers at Clarkson have been measuring and modeling emissions, downwind concentrations, and human exposure to transportation and power production energy systems for many years. Other researchers are working to estimate the overall lifecycle environmental impacts of a variety of energy systems..

                                                Current Collaborators and Funding Partners
                                                DoE
                                                EPA
                                                NYSERDA
                                                USDA
                                              • Energy Policy

                                              • Energy policy is the manner in which government (or sometimes another entity) decides to direct energy development: production, distribution and consumption. This can include legislation, international treaties, incentives to investment, market design, pure regulation, forecasting, and integration of renewable energy, guidelines for energy conservation and efficiency, taxation, planning, energy security, and other public policy concerns.

                                                In the context of global climate change, the issues surrounding energy policy interact more than ever with the world’s environmental and economic decisions. Energy policy is key to the integration of sustainable technologies, especially with our current electric grid system. It directly drives our decisions concerning energy storage for renewables, and a plethora of other public policy choices that drive the sustainability incentives, fiscal policy, supply and demand, and reliability of our energy supply.

                                                At Clarkson University, we integrate energy policy research with several of our courses, including Energy & Society, Creating Environmental Policy, Biofuel and Farm Policy, Intro to Environmental Science & Policy, Risk Analysis, Environmental Leadership, Environmental Law, and Environmental Policy. For instance, students are studying the impact of energy policy in concert with the emissions of pollutants from transportation, power production of energy systems, and alternative fuels that may be linked to health effects or climate change. The focus is a holistic approach to integrating science and policy.
                                                  • Transportation Systems

                                                  • A properly designed transportation system improves transportation mobility and accessibility while minimizing harm to our physical, natural, and social environments. The overall goal is to bring together engineers and scientists, social scientists, biologists, ecologists and economists to create the knowledge and technology that will lead to better investments and to smarter policies in transportation energy systems.

                                                    Some areas of expertise and research are:

                                                    Bridge Load rating and structural health monitoring
                                                    Vibration monitoring and modal analysis for condition assessment of structures and machines
                                                    Roadway and bridge design
                                                    Sensor development and deployment
                                                    Winter maintenance practices