Facilities

Computer Laboratory

The laboratory has 12 personal computers. All of the computers have internet access and laser printing ability. Software in this facility includes: Microsoft Office 2003 including Access, Word, Excel, Power Point and Outlook, Autocad 2004, ProE, Algor and Internet access.

Engine Power and Machinery

This laboratory provides a wide assortment of engines (gasoline and diesel) ranging in size from small single cylinder (2 cycle and 4 cycle) to 3, 4, and 6 cylinder diesel models. Two tractors are available for laboratory use (one gasoline and one diesel). Several cutaway engines are available as are cutaway models of manual shift and power shift transmission.

Instrumentation available for laboratory exercises includes: engine analyzers, dynamometers, a diesel test stand, temperature and pressure sensing, data logging, sound level, load cell, engine timing, flowmeter, stress coat equipment, strain gage measurement equipment, accelerometers, an acoustic flowmeter, exhaust analyzer, and LABTECH notebook software.

Machinery available for laboratory instruction includes: planter and sprayer unit test stands, tillage implement comparison unit, portable-electric hydraulic pump, and hydraulic components.

Analysis software packages available are ALGOR, Campbell datalogging and support software for programming, and monitoring and file transfer.

Prototyping/Research Service

This laboratory provides work space and shop facilities for students to develop and test prototypes (under supervision of faculty and department technicians) of design concepts or design project results. Facilities include: electric wire arc and gas welders, turning lathe, drill presses, shears and shaping tools, table, radial-arm and panel saws, metal-cutting saws, and a broad assortment of hand tools.

In addition to department facilities for these purposes, a laboratory in the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department provides extensive construction and fabrication facilities that are available to agricultural and biosystems engineering students via appropriate arrangements.

Biological Materials Properties and Handling

A wide variety of equipment is available to provide student laboratory experience emphasizing integration of biological materials information with engineering applications. This laboratory includes equipment such as: an experimental cross-flow dryer, an array of biomaterials moisture meters, precision balances and scales, drying ovens, a walk-in cooler, materials sieving and separating units, a computer-based dryer control system, a grain breakage tester, data logging equipment, and short or long-term on-loan commercial equipment for specialized testing/laboratory applications.

Environmental Measurements

This laboratory is used for teaching and research needs in the areas of irrigation engineering, environmental measurements, and natural resources management. Computers, data logging systems, and related equipment can be used here to test, calibrate, and monitor a variety of sensors for laboratory and field experiments. The lab is also used to set up and test sensors and data logging equipment prior to field deployment. Soil samples can be set up and run through wetting and drying cycles for testing and comparison of soil water sensors. Additional equipment includes a chest freezer, drying ovens, and a fume hood.

Instrumentation and Teaching Services Laboratory

This laboratory is not used directly by students in their laboratory experience courses. It is intended to provide space for centralized storage of instrumentation which can be easily moved and set-up in teaching laboratories as needed for specific laboratory projects/exercises. This laboratory provides work space for a department technician and associated student help to develop and prepare equipment/instrumentation for use in teaching laboratories.

This laboratory is also used as a teaching services laboratory to develop teaching aids, particularly computer-based teaching materials.

Electrical and Electronic Technology

This laboratory includes four electrical wiring booths for use with several electrical wiring exercises and demonstrations, wiring exercise panels, single and three phase power supplies, electrical meters, demonstration boards, and programmable logic controllers. Available instrumentation includes: digital and analog oscilloscopes, digital and analog multimeters, kilowatt-hour meters, wattmeters, ammeters, and voltmeters.

This laboratory also provides work space areas for instrumentation and measurements exercises. Experiments in electrical measurement, signal conditioning, computer-based data acquisition, sensor and transducer operation (measurement of strain, temperature, humidity, acceleration, sound level, etc) and data analysis occur in this laboratory.

Other equipment available for laboratory instruction includes: power supplies, protoboards, oscilloscope, a frequency generator, a frequency counter, data acquisition boards, 16 channel multiplexer, 8 channel multiplexers, and an AC motor load surveyor.

Software available includes electrical wiring demonstration and quizzing tools, and software for programming and monitoring PLCs. Software applications in ABEN 482 include Campbell CR-10 datalogging, communication and file transfer, and rosette stress and strain analysis.

Food Engineering and Pilot Plant

The NDSU Pilot Plant contains laboratory space dedicated to work in renewable fuels, biobased industrial products, and food and bioprocess engineering. The facility includes a large general wet/dry processing laboratory (3500 ft²) space, an explosion proof laboratory (400 ft²), quality control laboratory (240 ft²), and 2 offices. A new bioprocessing/wet chemistry laboratory (650 ft²) was completed in 2007 and is specifically equipped for work in bioprocessing and related analyses.

The facility has the equipment necessary for bench-scale production and analysis of both starch-based and cellulosic ethanol. Biodiesel can be produced at the bench-scale level and in 30-gallon batches. Oilseed processing abilities include seed preparation and fractionation, mechanical and solvent oil extraction, and oil refining and conversion to biodiesel. Equipment exists for many of the standard quality control analyses. Ample chemical and laminar flow hood space is available. Standard utilities include 220 and 440 V power, steam, vacuum, compressed air, and softened and distilled water. A walk-in cold room and freezer are available for sample storage.

Relevant equipment includes: temperature-controlled shaking water baths, Waters HPLC system with refractive index and photodiode array detectors, large autoclave, pH meters, chemical fume hoods, sterile laminar flow hood, centrifuges, microcentrifuge, drying ovens and incubators, lyophilizer, muffle furnace, various mills and pumps, thermochemical biomass pretreatment reactor, jacketed kettles, plate heat exchanger, countercurrent extractor, climbing-film evaporator, spray dryer, vacuum oven, tank press, gas chromatograph, Dionex Accelerated Solvent Extraction system, UV-Vis spectrophotometer, and Perten NIR and Nicolet FTNIR spectrometers.

Bio-imaging and Sensing Center

This laboratory is in an intermediate phase of development. This facility is being developed to serve research and teaching needs for integrating emerging artificially intelligence technologies for biological and agricultural applications. This laboratory is housed in room 210B of the Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Building.

At present, three PC-based computer vision systems and Sun' workstations with other electronic accessories (such as color video cameras, frame grabbers, video recorders, lighting research equipment, and lenses) are available in this laboratory. Additional computer-based motion control equipment and tactile sensors are also available. A multipurpose zoom microscope with fluorescence capability and a PC-based fluorescence spectrometer are recent additions to this lab.

Various computer software provides access to different artificial intelligence technologies, e.g., computer vision, neural networks, fuzzy logic. This computer software is SNNS' for neural networks, "Level 5" for expert systems, Optimas', ImagePro,' and Khoros for image processing and scientific visualization, and FIDE' is used for fuzzy logic.

The Bio-imaging and Sensing Center is committed to discovery, development and adaptation of cost-effective and workable solutions for problems in agriculture, food, feed, and fiber production, processing, and associated bio-systems.