Week 4

Overview of Status of Analysis, Design, Fabrication, Tests, etc.

• • The sensors and the flow meters have arrived and has been picked up.

  • In process of buying tee pipes & bell reducers for the housing of the temperature sensors.

  • Jose, our plumber, is ready to finish making the last connections of our system to the water line and will also connect our flow meters and tee pipes (for temp sensors) for us.

  • Met with Kleissl and Hal. Everything is going as planned but need electrical hookup connections to hot water tank asap

Accomplishments from Previous Week

• • A group account/email was created on HOBOlink and gmail so everyone in the group, including our sponsors, can access any data that will be collected. (Xavier, Cara, Nadim)

  • Hardware set up of the data logger is complete and ready to be used once piping is done to system. (Chris, Sean)

  • Started on MATLAB simulation. (Nadim, Chris)

  • Looked into hardware and supply stores that have the tee pipe we need. (Sean, Xavier, Cara)

  • Improvised when needed tee pipe size was not found and looked into bell reducers. Bought tee pipes (Sean)

  • Started a residential CAD model that would fit into our first residential test home's designated water heater space of 0.6223m x 0.6731m (24.5"x26.5") (Sean, Xavier)

  • Met with Jose, plumber, about implementing our sensors into the pipes (Nadim, Sean)

Goals for Next Week (list names after each item). Use specific and measurable objectives.

• • Have the flow meters and the sensors installed and connected to the data logger. (everyone)

  • Running the experiment several times with different flow patterns to make sure about the actual ratio of the cold to hot water. (everyone)

  • Figure out how to safely and effectively wire the Ethernet cable and electrical cables around our lab space. (Chris, Sean)

  • Research an electrical outlet hookup to the hot water tank. (Cara)

  • Find suitable electrical sensors to measure how much electricity we are using in kWh & order the sensors asap (Cara)

  • Finishing the MATLAB simulation for the entire system so we can easily calculate the COP & EF of the system. (Nadim, Chris)

  • Finishing the CAD model to fit into a residential space. (Sean, Xavier)

  • Continue updating website. (mainly Sean, but also everyone else)

  • Have the first rough draft of report done. (everyone)

Sponsor Comments from Last Meeting and Actions Taken to Address these Comments

• • *We have determined to meet sponsor weekly on Wednesdays. Thus, there will not be much progress to address sponsor comments shown on progress report. Instead, the progress will be shown on next week's progress report under "Accomplishments from Previous Week".

  • Sponsor wanted a sensitivity analysis once we are able to start testing. How sensitive is the COP value to the changes of water temperatures?

  • Wanted us to play with cold temp and hot temp and find the optimal numbers that would yield the highest COP possible.

  • Find COP drop once temperatures in cold and hot tanks reach/surpass limits & find these limits.

  • A power sensor (transducer) for the heat pump to measure the amount of energy the heat pump uses.

  • At the end, IF we do have time, perhaps test with a smaller cold water tank (20 gal) instead of our current water tank (28 gal) since the 20 gal is the ideal size to be installed to the residential test prototypes.

Instructor Comments from Last Meeting and Actions Taken to Address these Comments

• • Professor Kleissl wanted us to look into electrical hook-ups for the hot water heater asap. Will be doing that today (2/1/12)

  • How to tell if first trial of simulation is accurate or not. What should we test it against? Perhaps test it against against Hal's current model, use different flow patterns, test against experimental values.

  • Run tests to see whether we would get approximately same accuracy if we used a tee pipe to house temp sensor (direct contact with water) vs wrapping a temp sensor around the pipe (contact with pipes rather than with water)

Risks and Areas of Concern

• • The system needs to be insensitive to the flow patterns meaning it should be able to work with different water draw patterns.

  • Having direct contact with water when measuring temp might not necessarily be a better method than simply wrapping sensors around pipe

Resources or Information Required but not Available

• • How many times does the Geyser heat pump circulate for a 30 gal tank of cold water?

  • Which method of temperature measurement is better (more economical, accurate)? Wrapping sensors around pipe vs having direct contact with water

Schedule

• • Start testing various water temperatures and collect data in early Feb (everyone)

  • Finish residential CAD model and electrical hookups by end of this week (Sean, Xavier, Cara)

  • Order electrical sensors by end of this week (Cara)

  • Complete MATLAB model by next Wed (1/8) but aiming to finish this weekend (Nadim, Chris)

Budget (list amount spent and amount remaining)

*Italicized items were purchased in the past

Progress on Report and Webpage

• • Finished about half of report requirements for first rough draft. (Sean, Cara, Nadim)

  • Changed formatting of main page and team members' page (Sean)

  • Still researching into heat transfer/thermodynamics theory for our report (Xavier)