UCF develops new online NOx tracker

A new online Power Generation NOx tracker has been developed as part of an industry-education partnership between Mitsubishi Power Americas and UCF. The tracker uses data from the U.S. EPA database as analyzed by UCF’s Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research (CATER) to show trends over time. The tracker is accessible at no cost.

“As a university our role is to teach and produce research that solves a public challenge,” said Dr. Jayanta Kapat, the UCF engineering professor who leads CATER and is responsible for the data analysis on the NOx Tracker. “Innovation driven by industry and academia is changing the power generation landscape. We need to make sure as we advance that we do so responsibly. There has been concern that as the power generation industry decarbonizes, nitrogen oxides would become a problem; however, the tracker shows that nitrogen oxides have been declining significantly to low levels. This reflects successful innovations. Monitoring will help us all stay on track as we move forward.”

Experts at UCF’s CATER are evaluating and developing technology to address nitrogen oxides as well as other pollutants regulated by the U.S. Clean Air Act and monitored by the EPA. UCF engineers developed the NOx tracker to not only track the cumulative percent change in nitrogen oxide emissions, but also to follow the cumulative change in sulfur dioxide and overall power generated. Kapat and UCF post-doctoral scholar Dr. Ladislav Vesely will be updating the tracker every quarter.