Skip to main content

Skip to navigation

Departments & Programs

More

  • Life cycle assessment

    Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to generate comprehensive measures of environmental impacts from producing a fuel, a product or a service. Our group builds LCA models of energy technologies.
    Learn more

     

  • Energy systems optimization

    Optimization is used to choose technology configurations, designs, and operating conditions to achieve goals such as reduced cost and environmental impacts. Our group has applied optimization to carbon dioxide capture technologies and transportation fuels.
    Learn more

  • Resource depletion and energy system transitions

    The depletion of conventional energy resources has led to the development of fossil-based substitutes for oil such as oil shale, tar sands, and coal- and natural gas-based synthetic fuels.  We examine the nature of resource depletion and the dynamics of these transitions.
    Learn more

Welcome to the Environmental Assessment and Optimization Group

This Environmental Assessment and Optimization (EAO) Group focuses on building tools to reduce the environmental impacts of energy systems. The current group focus is on understanding greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from fossil energy systems.  Our approach includes building engineering-based bottom-up life cycle assessment (LCA) models to generate rigorous estimates of environmental impacts from energy extraction and conversion technologies.  Also, we build optimization tools to improve the environmental and economic performance of energy systems.

Our methods are applied primarily to transportation fuels, in an effort to understand and reduce the environmental impacts of conventional petroleum and substitutes for conventional petroleum (e.g., oil sands, oil shale).  We are also currently developing optimization capabilities for carbon dioxide capture and storage technologies.  A third area of interest is in the mathematical modeling of petroleum resource depletion and the shifts to alternative energy resources.

News

Congratulations Graduates

Congratulations to recent M.S. graduates Chandler Kemp, Yuchi Sun, and Sharad Bharadwaj, as well as recent Ph.D. graduate Charles Kang!

Dr. Kang successfully defends Ph.D. thesis, consumes large rack of ribs

Charles Kang of the EAO group successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis entitled "Computational optimization of design and variable operation of a CO2-capture-enabled coal-natural-gas power station". At our graduation celebration, he then successfully consumed a full rack of "victory ribs" (with help from his fellow grad students and his advisor). Congratulations Dr. Kang!

New publication: solar thermal integration with CCS

Phil Brodrick has published new research on integrating solar thermal with carbon capture and storage to capture CO2 emissions.