North Campus Chiller

The UI North Campus Chiller Plant is necessary for chilling water and delivering it to the UI facilities. The overall goal of this project is to (1) create and validate a working math model for this system using [EES] software, (2) take an inventory of existing instrumentation and decide on additional instrumentation needed to complete the system for data acquisition, and (3) demonstrate how to use the system model along with available data to study different operating conditions.

Background
The South Campus Chiller Plant (SCCP) is a plant that removes heat from water via absorption refrigeration cycle. The chilled water is then circulated through heat exchangers to cool university of Idaho's equipment as required. The SCCP uses cooling towers to take the heat out of the water being sent out to campus. The cooling towers work by misting the warm water down through air. The amount of heat being pulled out of the water being misted down is affected by ambient temperature.

Problem Definition
The UI campus uses the chiller plant to provide cooling by using the SCCP as a central generator for chilled water which is then piped throughout the buildings to air handling units. The piped water then serves individual tenant spaces, single floors, or several floors. The campus chiller has multiple benefits such as greater energy efficiency, better controllability, and longer life. It is also efficient in terms of space utilization within the building because multiple components don't need to be in the same space. Throughout the year, our team worked on improving the quality, productivity and efficiency of the SCCP. This was done through various methods of data collection and analysis. The data collected from the SCCP's current operating conditions suggest some areas of inefficiencies, leading to unnecessary operating costs.

Data analysis
The data that we collected using the existing and added instrumentation was given to us in .csv format. This data is collected in ATS from each instrument in individual files. We took those individual files and combined them into an single excel file. Once everything was combined we were able to use conditional formatting to find alarm data and the operating stages of the plant. From this data we were able to input it into our EES model to produce graphs and get correlations in between our math model predictions and the actual running of the plant.

Cycle Modeling
The figure above shows the thermodynamic cycle including all of the state points that we were able to develop using the P&ID's and general plant layout. We input the cycle into EES and were able to create a math model. This math model was comprised of a Fist Law and steady state analysis. Loop 1 of the model consists of the water flowing from the Cooling Towers to the chillers. Loop 2 deals with the vapor compression cycle used by the chillers, with the working fluid being R-134a. Loop 3 is where the cooling of the HVAC water takes place.

Document Archive

 * [[Media:Design_Review_Just_Chillin.pdf|Design Review]]


 * [[Media:Tech_Presentation_Just_Chillin.pdf|Technical Presentation]]


 * [[Media:Project_Poster_SCCP.pdf|Project Poster]]


 * [[Media:meeting_min.pdf|Meeting Minutes]]


 * [[Media:Final_Model.pdf|Math Model]]


 * [[Media:calculator_final.pdf|Excel Calculator]]