Browsing by Author "Opara, Raymond Okechukwu"

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    Development of an institutional-based community power pooling model for seamless renewable energy integration
    (Federal University of Technlogy, Owerri, 2023-10) Opara, Raymond Okechukwu
    In recent times, educational institutions were provided with sources of power, that were able to cater for their needs, cognizance of the low demand for knowledge economy was not high. As a result, the available energy was able to suffice for the limited schools, departments, and units within the university system that was available as at that time. As technology continues to improve, the quest for knowledge increases thereby giving needs for expansion in the educational institutions, which cut across creating of more administrative sections, departments and courses. This expansion came with the need for more energy consumption, which calls for a more robust technology with enabling energy integration. The universities were not taking into consideration using energy resources within their operating environments for optimal utilization. And even when there is any consideration to the use of renewable energy resources, standalone energy systems were readily attracted without consideration to network, and integration model, with a fear of un-seamless nature of renewable energy resources. To mitigate the aforementioned shortcoming, this project proposes an institutional-based community power pooling model with seamless renewable energy integration. This involves the formulation and development of an institutionalized local distribution network forming a mini – grid. Then appropriate dc and ac Load Flow (LF) model were applied to determine an optimal balance between locally available distributed energy resources (DERs) and co – located load centers with the referenced institution – in this case, FUTO. The model simulations reveal that the system is capable of synchronizing the renewable energy resources within the university in a single network bus, alongside with public power supply and diesel generators. This could guarantee efficient and optimal utilization of the energy potentials within the university community, with excess energy of 8,603,334 KWh/yr. available for sales to the neighbouring energy users from the formulated model. This model could be utilized in other universities across the nation with the view of tailoring its architecture to suit each institutions special peculiarities in terms of energy resources and load demand.
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    Performance comparison of the designed microcontroller heartbeat monitor and clinical stethoscope medical insturments based on statistical approach
    (IAEME, 2021) Akwukwaegbu, Isdore Onyema; Ezugwu, Ernest Ozoemela; Agubor, Cosmas Nkemmdirim; Opara, Raymond Okechukwu; Olubiwe, Mattew; Obichere, Jude-Kennedy Chibuzo
    Heart related diseases are becoming more rampant, which if not properly checked and controlled, will continue to contribute a greater percentage of death rates among the younger generations. Controlling this deadly disease will be initiated by monitoring individual heartbeat rate regularly by a new low cost invented microcontroller based heartbeat medical measuring and monitoring instrument developed using electronic engineering techniques. The developed device uses electric microphone to detect the heartbeat and convert it to alternating current (ac) signal in millivolts, which is later amplified by a non inverting amplifier. A Schmitt trigger (555 timer) coverts the amplified ac signal into a square wave (one pulse is represented by one square). These square waves are used to count the number of squares for 60 seconds and display the result on the liquid crystal display (LCD) screen. The developed device is packaged in a plastic casing with adequate spacing provided to accommodate all components. The mean and standard deviation measured heart beat results obtained using the developed device and conventional clinical stethoscope range from 70.63 to 82.37 beat per minute(bpm) and 69.65 to 81.63 beat per minute(bpm) respectively. The result obtained using the developed device when compared to those obtained from the manual test involving counting of heartbeat fall satisfactorily within the acceptable range of 60 to 120 beat per minute(bpm). This developed device is useful for families, hospitals, clinics, community medical centres and for other medical purposes.