Title (Descriptive Title of Your Project)

Title (descriptive title of your project)

Submitted to

(both individual and institutional) and address, such as

Arun Mehta

Electric Power Research Institute

3412 Hillview Avenue

Palo Alto, CA 94304-1395

Authors

Date

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Abstract/Executive Summary

Introduction and Background

Experimental Procedure/Methods

Results and Discussion

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Literature Cited

List of Figures

Figure 1Temperature calibration results indicating correlation and 99% statistical calibration curves. Residuals indicate no systematic biases. Also illustrated are the regulatory limits for temperature control and the control points that will prevent exceeding these limits (with 99% confidence).

List of Tables

Table 1Average Ultimate Analysis Results of Many Thousand Coal and Biomass Samples

(Repeat Title and Subtitle here but do not format them using Styles or they will appear again in the Table of Contents)

Abstract/Executive Summary

Every report should begin with a brief (one page) executive summary/abstract. The summary must include a short statement of the context (intro and background), methods, results, and conclusions. The executive summary must be a stand-alone section, that is, someone should understand the essence of the entire report on the basis of the executive summary. This is the only portion of the report many or most people will read.

(First level headings should be larger font than normal text or other headings and bolded. Normal text is generally 11-12 pts, so first-level headings should be about 14pt Styles should be used to format these and all other headings.)

(Normal text should be double spaced with a11-12 pt font, justified, and 0.5” indentation. There should be some (10 pt) extra space between paragraphs. Normal font should be so defined as a Style.)

Introduction and Background

The introduction and background start a discussion from a well-accepted or generally understood position and logically and succinctly describe in which areas this report makes specific contributions and how these fit into the broader picture. No original work should appear hear, but typically the bulk of the citations appear here. You should be able to complete this prior to completing any experimental work. The reader should understand exactly where the rest of the report contributesto the big picture and how these contributions fit into a broader context.

Try to use bulleted/numbered lists, graphics, etc. frequently. These help to break the monotony of many pages of text and create succinct and obvious focal points that are easy for your manager to cut and paste if she wants to use portions of your report (easy to reuse).

Experimental Procedure/Methods

A discussion of the experimental methods used in the project should include at least these things:

A succinct summary of safety issues and their mitigation.
The experimental design and summary of conditions.
All essential equipment used, with manufacturer and model number if the equipment is more than routine instrumentation or process elements. For example, a simple pump need not be too well documented if it fills a pedestrian purpose, but a gas chromatograph and the column in it should be. Procedures in using this equipment should be included.
A schematic figure of major equipment that illustrates its function and most essential instrumentation.
A list of all materials used, typically in Table format, with their relevant properties.

Results and Discussion

Some formats expect results and discussion to be clearly separated, and this should be easily done for the simple experiments involved in the UO lab. More involved experiments, in which some procedures depend on results from earlier procedures, cannot be effectively separated and are discussed together. That is, the discussion of the results from one step of the process leads to the design and execution of additional experiments. For the Unit Operations Lab, you are welcome to either divide this into two sections, one for results and one for discussion, or include results and discussion together.

This section of the document contains detailed discussions of your work, including supporting data, figures, tables, equations, etc. The specific structure of the discussion may vary from report to report but in all cases should be logically organized, typically following inductive or deductive logical steps. Normally this section will have several levels of subsections, etc. Formats for these are provided in the styles defined in this document. This is should be the bulk of your report.

This section of the report normally contains figures, tables, equations and other graphical or special material. Suggested formats for these materials are below.

The page should use the normal margins, that is, 1 inch top, bottom, left, and right. Page numbers should be centered at the bottom of the page. They should start with lower-case Roman numeral i on the title page and Arabic numeral 1 on the first page after the front matter (title page, table of contents, list of figures, list of tables, and nomenclature). However, neither the title page nor page number 1 should have a number on it (first numbers should be ii and 2 for the front matter and the report, respectively).

Figures should be inserted between paragraphs, not within a paragraph or with surrounding text, and should not appear in the text before they are cited. Preferably, they appear on the page where they are first discussed, but often they will appear on later pages because of format limitations. All figures should have captions, created with the Insert Caption option in MS Word™ (Reference->Insert Caption menu). Captions should appear below the figure, indented ¼ “ from the normal margins on each side with a hanging indent on the left of ½“ and 6pt. blank space between the caption and the figure and between the figure and the next line of text. Page breaks should not occur in the body of text and can be prevented by using MS Word™’s Keep Lines Together feature. Otherwise, captions should appear in the same font, size, and style as normal text (not bolded, etc.). Captions should provide enough detail that the figure is at least minimally understandable without reading the surrounding text. References to figures should use the Cross Reference feature (References->Cross-reference menu). Note that only the label and number should be inserted, not the entire caption. There is a drop-down list in the upper right corner of the dialog box that allows this. The great advantage of using captions and cross references in this manner is that they automatically renumber themselves and produce lists of tables, figures, etc.

When referring to a specific figure, the word figure should be capitalized, as in “That data in Figure 1 illustrate the calibration of the temperature sensor and its set points.” When referring to a figure generically without reference to its number, the word figure should not be capitalized, as in “The figure illustrates the calibration of the temperature sensor and its set points.” Similar rules hold for tables, equations, tasks, etc.

Whenever possible, figures should have mirrored axes for both the ordinate (y-axis) and the abscissa (x-axis). Both minor and major tick marks should be included, with major tick marks longer than minor tick marks. If possible, all tick marks should appear on the inside of the axis. Axis labels should include dimensions placed on the same line as the label but after a slash. All text in figures should be in a serif font (Arial is a typical example). Figures should have transparent (not white) backgrounds. Legends should be included when possible but should not have boxes around them or be labeled with the word Legend. While use of color is encouraged, all lines and symbols must be distinct in ways other than color so the figure is still interpretable after black and white photocopying. Statistical analysis is strongly encouraged and some indication of uncertainty should be included in a figure when possible. Often some program more capable than MS Excel is needed to produce a high-quality technical figure, but in Unit Operations Lab, Excel figures suffice. Wavemetrics markets a program called Igor Pro that you may find useful for many data types both for analysis and for formatting. Mathsoft’sMathCadis also capable of professional figure generation, although the default figures from MathCad are not high-quality. Figure 1 is one example of a well-formatted figure. Figures should generally be no busier (contain no more lines and annotations) than this.

Equations should be formatted using the software built into Office 2007, the new MS Equation system. The advantage to this is that equations can be directly cut and pasted into many mathematics programs (Mathematica is an example) and back into Word. Insert an equation by choosing the Insert->Equation command on the menu bar of Word 2007. Equations should be centered on the page and numbered sequentially in the right margin between parentheses.

The font used for variables in equations should differ from that used for normal text so that references to variables appear clearly different from normal text in a sentence. For example, if a appears in a sentence discussing the equation, the font and the italics help a reader understand that it refers to the variable a, not to the word a. Specifically, use Cambria or a similar font. Scalar variables in equations should be italicized, even if they use Greek symbols. Function names for logarithms, sine, cosine, exponentiation, etc. should be in the same font but not italicized. Indicial notation is preferred for vector equations. Equation (1) provides an example of equation formatting. Capitalization rule for equations are the same as for figures. Because engineering equations often are large, use the full width of the written page to format them (no indentation).

/ (1)

For several reasons, it helps to have equations entered as the center column of a three-column, one-row table. The cell borders of the table should be invisible and the first and third columns should be the same size and much narrower than the center column. This allows:

a)the equation to appear centered on the page if it is centered in the column,

b)a caption to be inserted in the right column so the equation can be automatically numbered without formatting the equation as a caption, and

c)both the caption and the equation number to have the same vertical center.

Numbering equations automatically in MS Word is not as convenient as numbering figures and tables. To provide for automatic equation numbering, first create a new label under Insert Caption (press the New Label button). The new label should be a single, open parenthesis, i.e., “(“. A closing parenthesis should be added after the equation number is inserted. You can then refer to the equation by inserting a cross reference similar to tables and figures, but by including the caption in the cross reference rather than just the label and number, as in Equation (1).There is, in MS Word 2007, a caption called equation, but at least I cannot get it to display on the same line as the equation as it should be displayed. As a workaround, I have a new caption label called “(“ that works as above. It may be easiest to cut and paste the above format to get it to work for you.

Table 1Average Ultimate Analysis Results of Many Thousand Coal and Biomass Samples

Elem. / Anthracite / Bituminous / Subbit. / Lignite / Grass / Straw / W. Chips / Waste W.
C / 90.22 / 78.35 / 56.11 / 42.59 / 45.34 / 48.31 / 51.59 / 49.62
H / 2.85 / 5.75 / 6.62 / 7.40 / 5.82 / 5.85 / 6.14 / 6.34
N / 0.93 / 1.56 / 1.10 / 0.73 / 2.04 / 0.78 / 0.61 / 1.01
O / 5.03 / 11.89 / 35.31 / 48.02 / 45.95 / 44.18 / 41.57 / 42.89
S / 0.96 / 2.43 / 0.84 / 1.15 / 0.24 / 0.18 / 0.07 / 0.07
Cl / 0.03 / 0.08 / 0.01 / 0.01 / 0.62 / 0.70 / 0.02 / 0.06

Tables should use the same caption and cross reference tools as figures (see Table 1). Table headings should be set apart with horizontal lines and the top and bottom of the table should have thick horizontal lines. Otherwise, the text of the table should have the same font and style as normal text except than rows should not have blank lines between them. This format is similar to the default Simple 1 format in MS Word. Do not use shading or other table features unless necessary as these features commonly do not photocopy well. Page breaks should not appear within a table unless the table is longer than one page. Table 1illustrates a typical table format. Many of the MS Word formatting options for tables focus on business reports and may not be too appropriate for technical reports, which tend to be conservative.

Conclusions

The conclusions section should be a succinct statement of the contribution of the paper, ideally framed by the Background/Introduction section. Nothing should appear in the conclusions that is not discussed and justified in the Results/Discussion section(s). After the abstract, the conclusions section is the second most commonly read portion of any report. It differs from the abstract in important ways, including (a) it is not a stand-alone summary of your paper and need not mention equipment/techniques or background, (b) it should provide detailed information about conclusions, including statistical estimates of certainties where appropriate, and (c) it may refer to other portions of the report if necessary.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledge anyone who has played a specific and substantial role in this work here but who does not appear as an author. Typical examples would include other students or faculty, staff, and funding agencies.

Literature Cited

Citations to literature should be in author, date form and bibliography listings at the end of the report should follow the examples given below. Bibliographic entries should be arranged alphabetically and then by date. Citations should include up to two authors names and the date of the publication, with dates distinguished by letters if there are ambiguities. Citations should be enclosed in normal parentheses. Bibliographic entries should be formatted with a hanging indent of ½ inch.

A computer program called EndNote, produced by ISI Research, is of great help in managing both citations in writing and a your literature database generally. The following paragraph provides some examples of citations.

Nitrogen release rates from coal follow systematic trends with particle burnout and with coal rank (Baxter, Mitchell et al. 1996).

Coal utilization technologies generate a variety of environmental, economic, and resource challenges (Smoot and Baxter 2002).

Biomass leaching and coal particle fragmentation investigations report substantial progress over the last decade or so(Kerstein and Edwards 1987; Helble and Sarofim 1989; Baxter 1992; Jenkins, Baxter et al. 1996; Bakker, Jenkins et al. 1997a; Bakker, Jenkins et al. 1997b; Jenkins, Bakker et al. 1997a; Jenkins, Bakker et al. 1997b; Jenkins, Baxter et al. 1998a; Jenkins, Baxter et al. 1998b; Jensen, Sander et al. 2001; Turn, Kinoshita et al. 2001)

Bakker, R. R., B. M. Jenkins, R. B. Williams, W. Carlson, J. Duffy, L. L. Baxter and V. Tiangco (1997a). Boiler performance and furnace deposition during a full-scale test with leached biomass. 3rd Biomass Conference of the Americas, Montréal, Ontario, Canada.

Bakker, R. R., B. M. Jenkins, R. B. Williams, W. Carlson, J. Duffy, L. L. Baxter and V. M. Tiangco (1997b). Boiler performance and furnace deposition during a full scale test with leached biomass. 3rd Biomass Conference of the Americas, Montréal, Ontario, Canada, Elsevier Science Limited.

Baxter, L. L. (1992). Char fragmentation and fly ash formation during pulverized-coal combustion. Combustion and Flame. 90: 174-184.

Baxter, L. L., R. E. Mitchell, T. H. Fletcher and R. H. Hurt (1996). “Nitrogen release during coal combustion.” Energy & Fuels10(#1): 188-196.

Helble, J. J. and A. F. Sarofim (1989). “Influence of char fragmentation on ash particle size distributions.” Combustion and Flame76: 183-196.

Jenkins, B. M., R. R. Bakker, L. L. Baxter, J. H. Gilmer and J. B. Wei (1997a). Combustion characteristics of leached biomass. Developments in thermochemical biomass conversion. A. V. Bridgwater and D. G. B. Boocock. London, Blackie Academic & Professional. 2: 1316-1330.

Jenkins, B. M., R. R. Bakker, R. B. Williams, L. L. Baxter, S. Q. Turn, P. Thy, M. Sime, C. Lesher, G. Sclippa and C. Kinoshita (1997b). Measurements of the fouling and slagging characteristics of banagrass (pennisetum purpureum) following aqueous extraction of inorganic constituents. 3rd Biomass Conference of the Americas, Montréal, Ontario, Canada, Elsevier Science Limited.

Jenkins, B. M., L. L. Baxter, T. R. M. Jr. and T. R. Miles (1996). Combustion properties of biomass. Engineering Foundation Conference on Industrial and Utility Use of Biomass, Snowbird, UT.

Jenkins, B. M., L. L. Baxter and T. R. Miles (1998a). “Combustion properties of biomass.” Fuel Processing Technology54(#1-3): 17-46.

Jenkins, B. M., L. L. Baxter, T. R. J. Miles and T. R. Miles (1998b). Combustion properties of biomass. Fuel Processing Technology, Elsevier Sci B.V.,Amsterdam,Netherlands. 54: 17-46.

Jensen, P. A., B. Sander and K. Dam-Johansen (2001). “Pretreatment of straw for power production by pyrolysis and char wash.” Biomass & Bioenergy20(6): 431-446.

Kerstein, A. R. and B. F. Edwards (1987). “Percolation model for simulation of char oxidation and fragmentation time-histories.” Chemical Engineering Science42(7): 1629-1634.

Smoot, L. D. and L. L. Baxter (2002). Fossil fuel power stations - coal utilization. Encyclopedia of physical science and technology, Academic Press. 6: 121-144.

Turn, S. Q., C. M. Kinoshita, L. A. Jakeway, B. M. Jenkins, L. L. Baxter, B. C. Wu and L. G. Blevins (2001). “Fuel characteristics of processed, high-fiber sugar cane.” Fuel Processing Technology.