BGE Capstone Project

My Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering required a capstone project, and my team was partnered with BGE to create a lower-footprint regulator station. This particular station sits between your home and the state pipeline, stepping gas pressure down to a pressure safer for neighborhood pipelines. Besides improving the overall footprint, secondary tasks included: Avoiding lowering the quality of interaction for maintenance staff, lowering visibility, and improving safety.

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Multiple designs were suggested and iterated on, but the team eventually settled on a 3-regulator system that could isolate each regulator for maintenance, or as a back-up system. Furthermore, the team also invested time into an electronic swap-over system that would be powered by a mobile power supply, and would hook into existing solar-powered oversight boxes on site.

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The most difficult part of the project was meeting the requested requirements while also making sure not to breach any BGE, state, or federal standards. The largest amount of work (besides developing prototypes) was collecting the proper amount of information on stakeholders and affected personnel by our changes. Then, implementing those feedback points into our overall design.

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Overall, our team's final design shrunk the existing footprint by 24%, without breaching engineering standards or practices for pipeline layouts. Linked above is the overview slide deck for our Capstone Design Expo, along with a small trailer I edited together to entice attendees to our table.