Date of Award

2021

Degree Type

Capstone Project

First Advisor

Dr. Bahram Nassersharif

Abstract

Team 4 was tasked by Stephan Toljan of Miniature Casting Corporation to create a closed loop water cooling system designed to cool down the machine temperatures by excluding their use of city water. Solving this problem began by touring the facility and inspecting the current cooling system. A preliminary patent search was conducted followed by a literature search to build a body of knowledge and understanding centered around this problem. Team 4 generated 120 original concepts as solution proposals. A Quality Function Deployment (QFD) comparison was performed and combined with sponsor feedback to develop preliminary designs. A final design was selected by Team 4 and was refined even further with another QFD as well as more detailed calculations in the spring 2021 semester.

This final design features a closed water loop system with two tanks, a chiller, and approximately 1,700 feet of piping. The new system will be connected to the preexisting pipes within the building to save money. Once the water exits the building the geothermal cooling part of the system will occur first before leading into the chiller. From the chiller it will be the appropriate temperature and lead into one of the two tanks where it will be constantly moving with the use of the water exchanger between the two. The cool water from the tanks will finally be re-implemented into the machines in the facility before the process repeats. This process will continue to repeat for the duration of the work day while production is in session.

Team 4 used Simscape, a program powered through Matlab, to construct a simulation model based on what would physically be built at Miniature Casting Corporation. Through the customer requirements, a working simulation was created but was unable to bring the heated water down the desired water temperature of 85℉, and only reaching as low as 90℉. It was concluded that this process would be functional, but on especially hot days it may need to occur a second time before the water is returned to the building.

Comments

Sponsor: Miniature Casting Corporation

Document Reference: MCE-402-004-2021

Download

Share

COinS