BAE PhD candidate wins ASABE Student Oral/Poster Competition
Congratulations to PhD candidate Yike Chen for winning the Student Oral/Poster competition from ASABE!
Yike is a 5th year graduate student working in Dr. Ruihong Zhang's lab.
The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) is an international educational and scientific organization dedicated to the advancement of engineering applicable to agricultural, food, and biological systems. The ASABE organization includes members from more than 100 countries. ASABE's Annual International Meeting was held in Detroit, Michigan this year from July 29 to August 1. The Student Oral/Poster Presentation awards are granted to participants that have displayed outstanding presentations in each of the ASABE technical communities. This competition is open to all undergraduate and graduate students who have registered for the conference, submitted an abstract, and presented at the ASABE Annual International Meeting.
Summary of Yike Chen's presentation
Yike's oral presentation revolved around the study of particle size distributions and the biomethane potential of flushed dairy manure in California. Dairy products are the largest agricultural commodity in California; however, the dairy industry is one of the major contributors to methane emissions. Within the dairy sector, more than half of the methane is emitted in manure storage lagoons. Mechanical solid-liquid separators have been used for the purpose of separating organic contents out of flushed manure before entering the anaerobic storage lagoons in order to reduce methane emissions. After measuring the particle size distributions of flushed dairy manure from farms, our study determines the biomethane potential of each solid and liquid fraction of the flush manure. Not only is the sizing of the screen crucial to the farms, but also the measurements allow us to calculate theoretical lab solids removal and methane emission reduction efficiencies.
The other project team members are Abdolhossein Edalati, Tyler Barzee, Hamed E Elmashad, and the principal investigator is Professor Ruihong Zhang.
Congratulations to Yike and the project team!