Campus as a Learning Lab

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Browsing Campus as a Learning Lab by Author "Ahmed, Saeed"

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    Modeling of the Water-based Heating System of the Mechanical Engineering Building at the University of Calgary
    (2019-12) Ahmed, Saeed; Li, Simon; Li, Leping; Ramirez Serrano, Alejandro; Nezhad, Amir Sanati; Hu, Jinguang
    In this research, the model of the water-based heating system of Mechanical Engineering Building (MEB) is developed. This project is conducted in collaboration with “Office of Sustainability” of University of Calgary (UofC), because one of their goals is to reduce the energy consumption of UofC’s buildings. The water-based heating system has one of the major share in total energy consumption of a building. It highlights the importance of building this model, which can help to understand some important aspects and variables (related to energy consumption) of the water-based heating system. The model has four major component models, namely boiler, Air Handling Unit (AHU), Reheat Coil (RHC) and radiator (RAD). A component model aggregately represents the similar type of equipment in MEB. For example, a single boiler model is used to represent two boilers of the water-based heating system of MEB. The component models of AHU and RHC are based on energy balance equations, and these are gray-box models. However, the models of boiler and RAD are black-box models, because some required data is not available for developing their gray-box models. The empirical data for developing component models is collected through Building Management System (BMS) software, with the help of Office of Sustainability. The model is developed in Simulink. An individual model for each component is developed and then parameters are estimated for each component model. The parameters of gray-box models are estimated in Simulink, whereas the coefficient parameters for black-box models are estimated in MS-Excel. The output of each component model is then compared with the measured data to ascertain the error. The integrated model of the water-based heating system is developed by connecting the component models. Being a pilot project, the worked helped all involved to understand the opportunities available and the difficulties present, to undertake a project related to UofC building heating system. The Simulink model developed can help the facility management of UofC to look into energy consumption of the water-based heating system of MEB.