2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

For many years, the author used a two-part group project in a second-semester Thermodynamics course to reinforce various concepts taught in the course. The first part of the project involved a team of students designing a modified Rankine cycle for a steam power plant. The design was subject to a set of given constraints, and the students had a goal of maximizing the efficiency of the cycle. Economic considerations were included in the project by assigning a cost to each potential addition and limiting the amount of money a group could spend on their design. Following completion of this portion of the project, a second part of the project involved the team designing a combustion process to supply the heat for their cycle.

The author modified the project to better incorporate economic decision-making into the design process. Rather than having a two-part project, the project is now done in a simple submission. In the revised project, each team was tasked with assuming the role of consulting engineers being asked by a utility to upgrade an existing basic Rankine Cycle with a variety of potential modifications. Economic considerations now centered on students reducing the cost to produce the same amount of electricity by improving the efficiency of the cycle – thereby reducing the fuel costs associated with their design. Students were given capital and O&M costs to use for each potential hardware improvement as well as fuel costs. The teams had to determine how long it would take to pay off the investments in capital improvements, and then determine the future profitability of the plant in light of the increased O&M costs and the reduced fuel consumption costs. While still providing students with experience applying the Thermodynamics principles of cycle analysis and combustion analysis learned in the course, this format was seen as being more realistic and was designed to give students more experience in what they may encounter as engineers in their future careers.

In this paper, both the original and revised versions of the course project are described, and the pedagogical reasons for the change are presented. Observations on the impacts of the revised project on student performance are discussed. Finally, a student survey was conducted to gather information on the student perceptions of the revised project, and the results of this survey are presented.