Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- All Subjects: Cooling
- Creators: Phelan, Patrick
Description
As the demand for power increases in populated areas, so will the demand for water. Current power plant technology relies heavily on the Rankine cycle in coal, nuclear and solar thermal power systems which ultimately use condensers to cool the steam in the system. In dry climates, the amount of water to cool off the condenser can be extremely large. Current wet cooling technologies such as cooling towers lose water from evaporation. One alternative to prevent this would be to implement a radiative cooling system. More specifically, a system that utilizes the volumetric radiation emission from water to the night sky could be implemented. This thesis analyzes the validity of a radiative cooling system that uses direct radiant emission to cool water. A brief study on potential infrared transparent cover materials such as polyethylene (PE) and polyvinyl carbonate (PVC) was performed. Also, two different experiments to determine the cooling power from radiation were developed and run. The results showed a minimum cooling power of 33.7 W/m2 for a vacuum insulated glass system and 37.57 W/m2 for a tray system with a maximum of 98.61 Wm-2 at a point when conduction and convection heat fluxes were considered to be zero. The results also showed that PE proved to be the best cover material. The minimum numerical results compared well with other studies performed in the field using similar techniques and materials. The results show that a radiative cooling system for a power plant could be feasible given that the cover material selection is narrowed down, an ample amount of land is available and an economic analysis is performed proving it to be cost competitive with conventional systems.
ContributorsOvermann, William (Author) / Phelan, Patrick (Thesis advisor) / Trimble, Steve (Committee member) / Taylor, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The concept of this thesis came up as a part of the efforts being devoted around the world to reduce energy consumption, CO2 emissions, global warming and ozone layer depletion. In the United States, HVAC units in residential buildings consumed about 350 billion kWh in 2017 [1],[2]. Although HVAC manufacturers are investing in new technologies and more efficient products to reduce energy consumption, there is still room for further improvement.
One way of reducing cooling and heating energy in residential buildings is by allowing the centralized HVAC unit to supply conditioned air to only occupied portions of the house by applying smart HVAC zoning. According to the United States Energy Information Administration [3], the percentage of houses equipped with centralized HVAC units is over 70%, which makes this thesis applicable to the majority of houses in the United States. This thesis proposes to implement HVAC zoning in a smart way to eliminate all human errors, such as leaving the AC unit on all day, which turns out to be causing a serious amount of energy to be wasted.
The total amount of energy that could be saved by implementing the concepts presented in this thesis in all single-family houses in the U.S. is estimated to be about 156 billion kWh annually. This amount of energy reduction is proportional to the electricity bills and the amount of dollars paid annually on energy that is technically being wasted.
One way of reducing cooling and heating energy in residential buildings is by allowing the centralized HVAC unit to supply conditioned air to only occupied portions of the house by applying smart HVAC zoning. According to the United States Energy Information Administration [3], the percentage of houses equipped with centralized HVAC units is over 70%, which makes this thesis applicable to the majority of houses in the United States. This thesis proposes to implement HVAC zoning in a smart way to eliminate all human errors, such as leaving the AC unit on all day, which turns out to be causing a serious amount of energy to be wasted.
The total amount of energy that could be saved by implementing the concepts presented in this thesis in all single-family houses in the U.S. is estimated to be about 156 billion kWh annually. This amount of energy reduction is proportional to the electricity bills and the amount of dollars paid annually on energy that is technically being wasted.
ContributorsFairag, Amr (Author) / Phelan, Patrick (Thesis advisor) / Bocanegra, Luis (Committee member) / Shuaib, Abdelrahman (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018