Enhancing Student Learning through Extracurricular Energy Projects

Abstract

Abstract During the past academic year, the Institution has involved itself with better understanding how energy is being consumed in commercial, industrial and residential arenas. An Institution student has partnered with a Company Sponsor, a manufacturer of kitchen ventilation systems, to create a platform utilizing the capabilities of aerodynamic assessment. This platform was designed to ensure that their products minimize energy consumption associated with ventilation of convective heat and effluent. Secondly, an internal student grant was awarded to allow a student researcher to develop a relationship between leakage areas, pressures, and flow rates. Understanding how these elements correlate will provide an understanding of energy consumption in residential, commercial and industrial settings due to building envelope construction and maintenance/aging flaws. The Company Sponsor manufactures kitchen ventilation hoods, which are sized for commercial kitchen use. This being the case, it was impractical to obtain a hood sized for use in the university laboratory. Therefore, a scaled-down model was designed and built so that the results from laboratory research could be correlated to commercial sized applications. All kitchen ventilation systems require two main parts; an exhaust air moving device (AMD) and effluent collection hood. In order to recreate these items, before testing of the scaled–down hood could begin, an air flow bench was developed and characterized to replicate the exhaust AMD system, which was then coupled to the scaled down version of the kitchen ventilation hood. To study the effects of leakage areas on energy consumption in building envelopes, a “blower door” simulation test bed was purchased with the grant funds. This test bed included “windows” or “apertures”, which allowed for various leakage geometries to be placed in the envelope of the structure. Along with this, the exterior structure and its cover included different pressure taps so that the internal static pressure within the structure may be determined at various locations. To complete the test bed, all of the instruments required to conduct a blower door test - an air moving device, differential and flow measuring device, blower door frame and covering - were included in the performance measure. An important aspect of these projects was the Institution was able to provide an undergraduate student valuable learning experiences by managing and executing these projects as an extracurricular activity. The learning experiences, present throughout the projects, consisted of both project management and technical aspects. Assessment of outcomes of student learning from these real world energy applications was also performed.