University of Houston students light the way to the future

Two University of Houston students embarking on a research project on the energy transition share their inspiring vision of the future.

In August 2023, the Baker Hughes Foundation awarded a $100,000 grant At University of Houston Energy Transition Institute (ETI) to support environmental justice research and workforce development programs. The grant has several recipients, including undergraduate students in the university’s Energy Scholars program who are working on research on carbon management, hydrogen and circular plastics. UH’s Energy Scholars program enhances students’ professional development by having them work with research faculty and industry partners on projects focused on energy issues.

We sat down with two students from the program, Mustafa Khan and Aaron Hinkle, to hear about their research project, Exploratory analysis: greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction at the Port of Houston.

Could you each please tell us a little about yourselves?

I study quantitative economics and have taken a wide range of courses. I had the pleasure of deepening my knowledge in the mathematics and physics departments. Delving deeper into these multidisciplinary fields allows me to better understand the world around us today and to contribute more to what we need to do to make tomorrow happen.

I am a second year mechanical engineering student specializing in robotics. Additionally, I am president of the UH Robotics Club and am involved in the UH Energy Coalition.

What does the energy transition mean to you and what impact does it have on your daily life?

When we think about the energy transition, we usually think about the adoption of new technologies and more efficient ways of producing energy. However, when we get into the details, the transition is multidisciplinary. It’s about how we approach the environment, future work opportunities and public health.

When we think about what these new technologies look like, we spend a lot of time thinking about each individual element involved in the entire process. We need to think about how we maximize efficiencies, technologies, conversations and communications to deliver these projects. We connect with our communities to understand people’s needs: what do they want, what do they like, what would they prefer to have over what they currently have?

What we envision for the future is this broad collage of distinct specializations to address new ways of managing everything we do today, whether it’s water resource conservation or development or the use of solar radiation to produce electricity. Either way, it all translates into things we do every day. All of this translates into how we live our lives and the need to focus on those technologies and methodologies that are conducive to the world we want to create. A sustainable world that allows people to live the way they want. It requires an incredible amount of specialization to achieve this.

As we make the decision to decarbonize, we will see that it makes a major difference to the public health of citizens. I hope that as we move forward, people will be able to work wherever they want, in any city, along any coastline, and live healthy lives. We can go home as a family and smile, that’s what the energy transition means to me.

For me, the energy transition means a better future for my family and future generations. What I really care about is making the world a better place for everyone.

Could you tell us about the research project you are working on together?

Aaron and I are collaborating on an incredibly interesting project related to the energy transition in terms of reducing emissions from the Port of Houston operations. We’re still in the early stages, but we’ve made great progress and done a lot of interesting research. We focused on what is called “court servants”, which are fundamental to cargo operations at the port. Yard hosts are miniature trucks that transport goods from one location to another in the port, and they run on diesel. Because they are used in all container transports, they are the second largest generator of emissions at the port. We are working on ways to identify pathways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the viability of potential solutions.

The Port of Houston Authority sent out requests for proposals and Helping Houston evolve, a nonprofit working to decarbonize transportation in the city, introduced it to us at UH. They let us know that the port was looking for research into how it could reduce GHGs, including introducing yard trucks using a different fuel. UH works very closely with Evolve Houston and this seemed like a great project to work on. We look at battery electric, LNG powered and hydrogen fuel cell shipyards. The next step is to think about what infrastructure the port would need. For example, for LNG, you would need LNG stored at the port and a way to get it there.

It’s still early, but what have been the challenges encountered in the project so far?

One of the biggest things that we really struggled to understand is the operational component. Different motors RPMs consume different levels of fuel and therefore produce different emissions. We can easily collect this data, but we need to look at the why: why are construction site backpackers idling or crawling, even though they are moving less than 6 km/h? How can we make this more effective? We’d love for Aaron and I to go down there with our feet on the ground with stopwatches to gather more information, but understandably there will be issues getting access for non-Port Authority people. . But we intend to ensure that we have quality data that we collect ourselves, to provide us with information that we can then use to support our ideas.

We can look at different fuel sources, existing technology, leasing programs and an implementation timeline. These are all things that fall within our jurisdiction. What’s exciting is that our entire research team is talking about developing our own type of technology to meet the port’s rail yard maintenance needs. The challenge is that the time frame required to develop a new technology, test it, obtain the appropriate funding to build a prototype, would take years for this project! We are trying to determine the most effective approach and how far we go.

How have you found communicating with the current port operators?

To be honest, that was probably the biggest obstacle. Operators do not always want to change their habits or discover new technology that could be more efficient. We are academics with no experience in these operations, trying to convince them to inform us about the decisions they make when operating in a typical shift. We would like to know why they choose to stall rather than speed up or get stuck in slower traffic rather than take a more efficient route. This is information that we have not been able to gather until now.

Are your University of Houston mentors able to help you?

Our mentor Doug Erwing worked with us to keep us on track and advocated for us, setting up meetings with Evolve Houston and trying to help us organize field research. It was really helpful.

You talked about a multidisciplinary ecosystem needed to drive decarbonization.

How important do you think it is for companies from different sectors, NGOs and academics to collaborate to contribute to the energy transition? Can they make a difference?

Giving the university the opportunity to collaborate across divisions and giving students the opportunity to get involved in research is great. It could be interesting to develop a survey course, which could be offered to specific specializations, to a college or to a pan-university initiative, where an interdisciplinary program would see professors in constant collaboration with businesses.

For example, they could work with specific divisions within Baker Hughes and the company could talk to the professor about what they are discovering in their work and where they want it to go. Then this inquiry course becomes a conversation around that, with projects directly related to the necessary skills students need as they embark on the job search. This type of collaboration could be incredibly valuable. There is a big opportunity to build a talent pipeline through collaboration between industry and academia – it’s a matter of identifying the best way to achieve this.

I agree. If universities can work with companies to help train students and allow them to move into specific fields of work after they graduate, for me, I’m really interested in robotics. So anything my university can do to help connect me with potential employers in this field will also mean that I can in turn share the knowledge I have gained from my studies with them.

What excites you most about the future?

I look forward to learning new things and making connections where people can teach me new things. I want to learn as much as possible because I love learning. I want to continue learning forever.

University students are all eager to learn. What really excites me is that as we get out there and start contributing and making an impact, the constant stream of new learning will be unlike anything we’ve seen before.

We have real problems that will take real effort to solve and once we solve them, the innovations and opportunities that will be created and the new doors that will open will be so incredible. This is what I’m looking forward to.