Clean Coal – Tens of millions of government and private dollars going towards pollution controls on exhaust steams. The most immediate problem is mercury. How do you oxidize it to a halide salt be for the vaporized liquid leaves the smoke stack. Lots of exposure to reaction kinetics and experimentation. Coal gasification is the wave of the future, not combustion.
Combustion – Surrogate fuel design. Experimentation, characterization, and synthesis of artificial fuels with a small number of components in known concentrations that strongly resemble the real thing. Such fuels are easier to analyze and model. Researching them allows us to use the real fuels more efficiently.
Biomass combustion.
Wavelength specific laser grid development. By adjusting the wavelength of the lasers, detectors can be customize to look for various combustion by products and intermediaries yielding more accurate models and eventually better fuels. Great work to be done in the experimental area. Research and Development is fun, but I still have to eat once I graduate.
Carbon Dioxide Sequestration. We produce the stuff like crazy, so let’s put it back when we’re done. Meh. Interesting, but a little to narrow.
Oil Shale/Sand. How do we get it out of the rocks? How do we turn it into something useful. Possibly too much analysis. Possible too little English as a first language. Tons of job opportunities.
Two sisters at BYU, house in
Tennessee.
Nuclear - "One project is based on hydrodynamics of spouted beds that is important to particle coating. This work is for the Nuclear Engineering Research Initiative (NERI) for Universities, DOE, for nuclear fuel particle coating. Nuclear energy is now considered “green” technology, there is no melt down problem with Gen IV reactors and developments are being made to transmute and burn all of the fission products so there is no waste." Nuclear is cool. That's all there is to it. Fewer job opportunities however.
Biomass – see previous description. Progressive but possibly a lot of hoopla. Fewer jobs, lots of theory.
Parents, the farm, being out of
According to my horoscope, I'm supposed to avoid deceptively tempting offers and trust the advice of the "experts." So what does one do when it is the experts who are making the offers?
1 comment:
If the money is the same from both offers and if ranking does not matter, then go for the social aspect.
Graduate school results in drastic reduction of social life.
I would also decide on location of industry/academia in that region. Since I am in technology, I would prefere UCDavis versus U.Virginia, just because of former's proximity to Silicon Valley.
Congrats on acceptance.
Making choices is better than not having to make one.
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