January / February 2004
2004 Biosystems Engineering
Senior Designs
 Jodi Lindgren and Pete Wyckoff are hard at work creating their small scale, sustainable aquaponics system |
Twenty-five students in the Biosystem Engineering Senior Design Capstone Course are well on their way to creating 7 design projects for this years BE Showcase, to be held April 22, 2004 on Campus at the Kellogg Center. The Culinary Connection (Robert Bable, Thomas Hefferan and Tracy Kamikawa) is developing process options for producing a low-carbohydrate, high-protein pasta alternative, made from chicken meat. They will compete in a joint effort with MSU’s Food Product Development Team during the 2004 Institute of Food Technologists Competition, July 12-16 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
On a completely different venue, the power and machinery team (Aaron Kaeb, James Bosserd, Mark Dekline and Christopher Prone) is designing and building a ¼ scale tractor that will compete, along with more than 30 other university teams, in the ASAE ¼ Scale Tractor Design Competition to be held June 3-6, East Moline, Illinois.
Natural Solutions (Lindsey Dees, Dena Isabell, Courtney O’Neill and Erin Ward) is designing and constructing a wetland system to reduce ammonia levels collected in landfill leachate. The system must be cost effective, self-sufficient and function year around.
The Backerlad Dairy Bio-Filter team (Erin Henderson, Adam Lawson and Paula Steiner) is designing a biological filter to reduce the suspended solids and chemical oxygen demand from the annual 2.2 million gallons of runoff and wash water prior to discharging to an on-site constructed wetland. The bio-filter must be simple and inexpensive to construct and maintain, utilize a substrate that is easily transported and readily available, and be operatative from spring to early fall.
Bass and Grass (Paul Forton, Andy Kaye, Jodi Lindgren and Pete Wyckoff) is designing and constructing a small scale, sustainable aquaponics system that is easily maintained and can be used in an educational setting to teach sustainable agriculture concepts and advanced ecological principles. The system must have a sustainable mass balance between the tilapia and lettuce. The nutrient accumulation must not approach harmful levels and the fish waste must provide the lettuce’s entire nutrient requirements.
Others (Tolam Nguyen, Tim Long, W. Reid Shepard and Andy Bender) are designing modifications to current football helmet padding systems to reduce oblique impact forces along the head, jaw and face. Their final design will incorporate a viscoelastic layer within the helmet padding system to absorb the shearing forces.
The Biosensors to Detect Water Contamination team (Katriina Javoroski, Priti Shah, and James Zigouris) is developing an automated system for the detection of potential contaminants within a community water distribution system. The automated system will withdraw water samples at a location just prior to distribution for public consumption. Antibiotics and dioxetane will be used to initiate a chemical reaction that will produce light when contaminates are present. When light is detected by the spectrometer an alarm will sound.
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February 3, 2004
