Microalgae is a promising source of renewable biofuels, and optimization and control of the biomass growth stage can make techno-economic improvements. This work explores the development of an algae growth model from first-principles, which includes the impact of natural vagaries of weather (and such) associated with production in an open system. Consequently, the process simulation is stochastic as well as fundamental; it returns a distribution of results representing the day-to-day realizations from natural variability. It also expresses day-to-night variation in the cycling solar energy. The simulation is then used to optimize pond design and management (the growth time, raceway depth, pH control, etc.) to improve profitability. Since the simulation is stochastic, nonlinear, and with multiple optima, a multiplayer direct search optimization technique with steady state convergence criteria is used for optimization. Conclusions are that (1) accounting for natural variation in the optimization leads to noticeable improvement in profitability, (2) sensitivity analysis of the model reveals where fundamental science research is needed to underpin critical techno-economic phenomena, and (3) the stochastic optimization approach has wide ranging applicability.

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Recent increases in engineering enrollments have spurred interest in developing course structures that can increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of course delivery. This need is particularly acute in project and lab-based courses. One potential model is to convert the traditional learning environment to an internet-based e-learning system. Such an e-learning system can be structured to be essentially independent of class-size, time, and geographic location. Online courses also mimic the realities of industrial projects in that teams of global multidiscipline engineers interact via the internet. Universities are engaged with trying to replicate this online, multidisciplinary experience for their students.In the project described here, a beginning multidisciplinary engineering course, the e-learning concept was applied to "Engineering Computer Programming" (ENGR 1412) at Oklahoma State University. This course is a 2-credit course, with a lecture session to introduce programming and engineering concepts, and a lab session to give hands on experience for programming to the students. Help sessions were conducted by Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) to assist students on projects, quizzes, and exams. The course projects were designed to introduce principles from various engineering disciplines to the students. Every problem in the course project focused on a specific component of the engineering design cycle, such as researching, modeling, implementing, measuring, and communicating. Herein, we address the transition of a project-based course, ENGR 1412, from traditional methods to internet based e-learning systems, where lectures and lab sessions are video recorded, and exams, assignments and help sessions are handled online. This transition was done in step-by-step fashion in order to gauge student response and performance in incremental fashion. We also address the challenges faced during the transition of this course, recommendations to overcome those challenges, and suggestions on how to implement a distance education program for any project-based or lab-based engineering course.Exam scores and student surveys were used to evaluate the effectiveness of this internet-based elearning system. The transition from paper-based examinations to online examinations has increased the class average on exams by 6% for a class of 310 students. Further, the students have taken surveys twice during the course, and both the midterm and final course evaluations favored the online exams and video lectures. In particular, students found the video lectures to be extremely helpful, as they can review the lecture content, as needed, to understand the concepts.