Industrial Projects

2012-2013 Projects

Modeling-Based Scale-Up of Reactors in Microwave-Assisted Chemistry

Sponsor: SAIREM SAS
Advisor: Vadim Yakovlev
Student: Andrew Holmes

Upgrading efficient reactions of microwave-assisted chemistry to the level of industrial technology is slowed down by difficulties in development of large-scale productive reactors. This project demonstrates that microwave reactors can be designed with the help of computer optimization. We outline a CAD approach based on the application of an ANN optimization to a microwave reactor. This technique is used to determine the geometry of a system considered as an enlargement of a small reactor. Functionality and practicality of the technique is demonstrated by its application to MiniFlow 200SS batch reactor from SAIREM SAS. Viability of the approach is illustrated by examples of three-parameter optimization of larger systems guaranteeing, for a given reactant, at least 90% energy efficiency.

Indexed Universal Life

Sponsor: John Hancock
Advisor: Jon Abraham
Students: Hairan Li, Andrew St. Jean, Sergey Tsitlenko

John Hancock Financial Services is a major provider of various life insurance products in the United States. Due to government statutes, the company can only illustrate each of their insurance products at one interest rate. The goal of this project was to determine an appropriate interest rate for John Hancock to use in illustrating their Indexed Universal Life Insurance policy. This was accomplished by building a model that simulates the policy multiple times and generates a probability distribution of the internal rates of return.

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Last modified: Feb 05, 2016, 14:04 UTC