Week 9 Preliminary Presentations and Updates

In week 9, our group presented our preliminary engineering design project. We were advised by Dr. Spatari to modify our tabled information by converting it into a graphical chart, so that the research is visually more effective and easier for the audience to understand. In addition to the preliminary presentation, we decided to enter the ENGR 103 Poster Competition in order to showcase our results to a broader audience. Using the template provided on the ENGR course site, we took the most important points of our project and used that information to create our poster. It's final submission is pending because we are planning to look through it a few more times before we finalize it.

Week 8 Updates and Final Presentation Preparation

During week 8 of our Engineering Design Project, we collaborated and began preparing the final presentation. First, our group formatted the entire outline for which topics we will be talking about. We are to begin a slide detailing which individual will be handling and discussing each point. Wing Ni will start it off with our design rationale, explaining the reasons and motivation behind our design project. The importance of hybrid technology will be thoroughly discussed, including economics and international affairs. Next, Kenny will follow up with public health and environmental safety matters, as well as background information regarding the recent controversy questioning the legitimacy of hybrid vehicle environmental impacts. Then, Alan will clarify the exact methodology behind our numerical data research (GREET 1&2, EPA). He will back up all of our collected information and analyze the results in order to discuss and explain our project outcome. Besides organizing our roles and keeping each other accountable, a final run down was conducted to check and make sure all of our data was correct.

Week 7: Final Report Draft Submission and Updates

In week 7, we submitted their final report draft that entailed a cover page, a two page policy memo to the United States Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, and a succeeding appendix section that included the tables, backup information and references that our group utilized. In terms of precision and accuracy, we went back to the very beginning and checked each and every numerical reading and calculation, including the tables from weeks four, five, and six. Afterwards, we went back to the GREET 1 and GREET 2 models to make sure that our data analysis was legit and correct. The information gathered from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) source was also checked in the same manner for validity.

Week 6: Lifetime Emissions Breakdown and Conclusion

In week 6, a table comprising the total amount of lifetime manufacture emissions was created from the gathered table information in week 5. The table is shown below. From these numbers, one can clearly see that while the Prius is much more efficient in terms of fuel economy and operative emissions, the manufacturing emissions are substantially higher when compared to the Hummer. Thus. our group concluded that regardless of the eco-friendly efficiency of hybrid technology, the fact remains that it has the potential to drastically reduce the environmental impact of transportation.

Total Lifetime Manufacturing Emissions
Pollutants	Hummer (g)	Prius (g)
VOC	4,511	4,729
CO	23,425	26,091
NOx	6,401	6,977
CH4	11,493	12,078
CO2	4,919,691	5,336,475
GHG	5,319,611	5,754, 993