Ximena Prugue (Mechanical Engineering)
About DOE Fellow
Ximena Prugue graduated from Florida International University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. She was the founder and President of Giving the Green Light, a non-profit organization that works towards alleviating energy poverty in rural India with renewable energy. Her interests include design, solar energy, and social engineering. Ximena is currently an associate mechanical engineer at BRG Sports.
DOE Related Projects:
Ximena is currently working on the Asynchronous Pulse Unit under Amer Awwad and Jairo Crespo. The Asynchronous Pulsing System is connected to two hydraulic piston pumps that use a hydraulic pulse generator to create pressure disturbances from both sides of a blockage in a pipeline, asynchronously, to maximize the resulting force on the blockage. By connecting the testing pipeline in a loop with a plug between them, Prugue is analyzing the individual pipeline section pulse characteristics to determine how each pulse influences the total plug dynamic loading. She is performing asynchronous pulsing unplugging trials that vary the static pressures, frequencies, and percentage of water in the pipeline to unplug the blockage. The experiments included the placement of 2-foot plugs within the test pipeline loop and using the system to unplug the pipeline. The plugs were made by mixing potassium magnesium sulfate (K-mag) and water at a ratio of 90% K-mag to 10% water by weight.