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Masters Degrees (Mechanical Engineering)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10413/6862

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Browsing Masters Degrees (Mechanical Engineering) by Subject "Air conditioning."

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    Economic evaluation of a district cooling system incorporating thermal storage.
    (2003) Bannerman, Andrew.; Govender, Saneshan.
    The following report investigates district cooling systems. This form of technology provides an alternative means of providing cooling. In a traditional cooling system each building would include cooling equipment to serve only that building. District cooling differs in that water is chilled at one location and pumped to two or more buildings. District cooling has many benefits over traditional cooling systems. This report, however, aims to determine the economic benefits (if any) of district cooling systems. The location chosen as a model for this study was the University of Natal (Durban) campus. This campus currently operates a district cooling system serving six buildings. This study is hypothetical in nature, as the cooling system is already finalized and operational. The aim of this dissertation is to answer the question of which would be the more attractive alternative if the University were in a position of having to install a completely cooling system. One of the most important steps in this process is the calculation of cooling loads. The cooling load was estimated for each of the buildings associated with the district cooling system. The LOADEST software package was used to derive these cooling loads. The accuracy of LOADEST software was also validated in this study. The bulk of this report is composed of the preliminary work required to obtain capital and operating costs for cooling systems, including validation of cooling load calculation software. It was felt that this prelimiinary work justified inclusion in the final report to provide accurate representation of the steps taken before any economic evaluation could be reached. The capital and operating costs of the district cooling system and a more traditional system were compared. It was found that the district cooling system reduces operating costs significantly, although it's capital cost is higher than the traditional system against which it was compared.
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    Optimization of energy conservation measures to improve efficiency in commercial buildings.
    (2021) Ismail, Amina.; Inambao, Freddie Liswaniso.
    In addition to international energy concerns, South Africa is facing its own electricity generation challenges. Periodic load shedding leads to a decrease in national revenue as the production of goods and services comes to a halt and investor confidence in the country declines. This particularly affects small businesses and contributes to unemployment. Many South African government buildings are old with poor energy management practices. These buildings tend to consume more energy than necessary, making the buildings highly energy intensive, thus compounding the energy demand on the grid. The country’s energy challenge and the lack of energy efficiency in commercial buildings adds to excessive and wasteful consumption of energy, which negatively impacts the environment and the already hurt economy. The aim of this research was to evaluate energy efficiency in a public commercial building and identify the drivers and barriers to energy efficiency to improve energy management practices and ensure electrical and mechanical systems are energy efficient. The outcome from this research indicates that energy consumption can be improved and reduced by using energy efficient technology, implementing energy efficient design techniques for systems design, and incorporating energy conservation measures where possible. Effective energy management of a commercial building involves operation and maintenance of electro-mechanical equipment and continuously improving energy consumption by monitoring the buildings energy use. Another important outcome from this research is that government regulations, building policies and other regulatory documents play an important role in encouraging the implementation of energy efficiency as well as monitoring and improving energy usage. A review of energy efficiency in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems indicated that energy efficiency can be implemented from the design stage, where the designer selects energy efficient technology so that energy efficiency of the system is optimised. A review of various articles concluded that energy efficiency of lighting systems and miscellaneous electrical loads (MELs) can be improved by the use of energy efficient light bulbs, occupancy sensors, day/night switches and other novel energy efficient technologies. The review on drivers and barriers to energy efficiency showed that drivers and barriers to energy efficiency can be found in various stages of a building’s life cycle, and in some cases decisions made at the inception stages affect the energy consumption during the operation of the facility. The experimental results showed that the energy conservation measures implemented in the buildings in this study were relatively cost effective and produced a significant improvement in the consumption of electrical energy.