Educational Mechatronics and Internet of Things: A Case Study on Dynamic Systems Using MEIoT Weather Station

This paper presents the design and development of an IoT device, called MEIoT weather station, which combines the Educational Mechatronics and IoT to develop the required knowledge and skills for Industry 4.0. MEIoT weather station connects to the internet, measures eight weather variables, and upload the sensed data to the cloud. The MEIoT weather station is the first device working with the IoT architecture of the National Digital Observatory of Intelligent Environments. In addition, an IoT open platform, GUI-MEIoT, serves as a graphic user interface. GUI-MEIoT is used to visualize the real-time data of the weather variables, it also shows the historical data collected, and allows to export them to a csv file. Finally, an OBNiSE architecture application to Engineering Education is presented with a dynamic system case of study that includes the instructional design carried out within the Educational Mechatronics Conceptual Framework (EMCF) to show the relevance of this proposal. This work main contribution to the state of art is the design and integration of the OBNiSE architecture within the EMCF offering the possibility to add more IoT devices for several smart domains such as smart campus, smart cities, smart people and smart industries

Methodology for the Development of Augmented Reality Applications: MeDARA. Drone Flight Case Study

Industry 4.0 involves various areas of engineering such as advanced robotics, Internet of Things, simulation, and augmented reality, which are focused on the development of smart factories. The present work presents the design and application of the methodology for the development of augmented reality applications (MeDARA) using a concrete, pictorial, and abstract approach with the intention of promoting the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the students within the conceptual framework of educational mechatronics (EMCF). The flight of a drone is presented as a case study, where the concrete level involves the manipulation of the drone in a simulation; the graphic level requires the elaboration of an experiential storyboard that shows the scenes of the student’s interaction with the drone in the concrete level; and finally, the abstract level involves the planning of user stories and acceptance criteria, the computer design of the drone, the mock-ups of the application, the coding in Unity and Android Studio, and its integration to perform unit and acceptance tests. Finally, evidence of the tests is shown to demonstrate the results of the application of the MeDARA

Review of the Pressure Swing Adsorption Process for the Production of Biofuels and Medical Oxygen: Separation and Purification Technology

The production of biofuels has had a great impact on climate change and the reduction of the use of fossil fuels. There are different technologies used for the separation and production of biofuels, which allow having compounds such as ethanol, methane, oxygen, and hydrogen, one of these promising technologies is the Pressure Swing Adsorption process (PSA). The objectives of this article focus on the production and purification of compounds that achieve purities of 99.5% bioethanol, 94.85% biohydrogen, 95.00% medical oxygen, and 99.99% biomethane through the PSA process; also, a significant review is contemplated to identify the different natural and synthetic adsorbents that have greater adsorption capacity, the different configurations in which a PSA operates are studied and identified, and the different mathematical models that describe the dynamic behavior of all the variables are established that interact in this PSA process, parametric studies are carried out in order to identify the variables that have the greatest effect on the purity obtained. The results obtained in this review allow facilitating the calculation of parameters, the optimization of the process, the automatic control to manipulate certain variables and to achieve the rejection of disturbances to have a recovery and production of biofuels with a high degree of purity

Optimization and Recovery of a Pressure Swing Adsorption Process for the Purification and Production of Bioethanol

Today, there are new technologies to produce bioethanol: one of them is the Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) process. This process has displaced other separation technologies due to the use of natural adsorbents and its methodology to obtain high purities with a lower energy cost. The aim of this work focuses on the optimization of the PSA process (experimental case) to obtain a higher recovery and production of bioethanol using lower energy consumption. The results are favorable since the energy cost is reduced to a range of 60% and 62%, obtaining purities above 99% wt of ethanol and recovery between 75% and 77.41%. The bioethanol produced and purified in the different scenarios meets international standards to be used as a fuel or oxygenating additive