Physical laboratory experiments are built to provide students with hands-on opportunities and have long been crucial for engineering training. However, due to the rapid growth in number of enrollments, limited and shared space, undergraduate students have experienced an increasing difficulty gaining valuable hands on experience in the lab. While traditional lab should never be abandoned, adding virtual labs to assist with it could benefit students without the limitation of enrollment capacity or lab availability. In this paper, we discussed a pilot study of developing a virtual fluid mechanics laboratory to supplement existing physical lab exercises. The virtual lab was designed to enrich students’ lab experience, stimulate interests, and bring more individual exercise time. It was developed to contain two components: a virtual lab tour and a virtual reality (VR) simulated pump experiment. The virtual tours served as a pre-lab instruction tool that provided students with an overview of the fluid mechanics lab. The VR pump experiment replicated the physical experience of performing the physical lab. Preliminary feedbacks were positive for both components of the virtual lab. Students considered that the virtual tours were very informative and useful, while that the VR pump lab was intuitive and time-saving. This proved that with realistic lab simulations, the virtual lab had great potential to provide students more flexibility to perform hands-on experiment and to develop technical acumen outside of the physical classroom. Further improvement was discussed to implement in the next stage to create more immersive experience in assistance of the lab instruction.
The decline of surface water sources along with periodic droughts has introduced new challenges for the state of California. In order to keep up with the increasing demand for water, the state is heavily relying on imported water from the north to Southern California as well as importing water from the Colorado River. The imported water has a large carbon footprint due to using grid power for water transport. Water reuse (reclaimed) is considered as one of the solutions to reduce the dependency of state on imported water. The research team at Cal Poly Pomona, is developing an off-grid solar-powered greywater treatment system for non-potable use in single households. Greywater is the drained water from bathroom sinks, showers, tubs, and washing machines; not including wastewater from toilets or kitchen sinks. Treating greywater on-site can provide significant water savings, and can reduce the carbon footprint of desalination using solar panels. The developed system is comprised of a three-stage treatment train: micro-filtration, solar-driven reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet disinfection. The end product of the project is capable of reclaiming 90–100 gallons of water per day which is about 60% of residential greywater waste. The system removes large suspended particles (particles of dirt, food, etc.) as well as organic and inorganic dissolved contaminants. It is demonstrated that the system can provide a permeate quality that agrees with recommended guidelines for reclaimed water. The system has a recovery rate of up to 62%.
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