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Session 1566

Capstone Design Experience in a Thermal-Fluid Applications Course, and Development of an in-house Refrigeration Recovery System.

Ganesh Kudav, Aaron Cain Youngstown State University, Youngstown - Ohio

Abstract

The Mechanical Engineering curriculum at Youngstown State University (YSU) integrates design and computer aspects throughout the freshmen, junior, sophomore, and senior years. However, some senior year courses have much more intensive capstone design requirements. Thermal-Fluids Applications, ME – 726, is a late junior/early senior level course. The course deals with design and application of thermal-fluid systems such as heat exchangers, pumping and piping systems, electronic cooling, and other closely related topics presented by the faculty – topics that may be related to a continuing research project, or a consulting problem. One way to get the students involved is to assign the problem as a design and development project that accounts for 20 to 30% of the course grade, the rest from the tests, final exam, and assignments. This paper discusses one such project that was the outcome of the author’s consulting activity. The students were assigned to design and develop a refrigeration recovery unit incorporating the acceptable industry and EPA standards. The EPA is currently requiring a ban on the manufacture of all refrigerants that chlorofluorocarbon-based or the CFC’s, thus gradually phasing out the systems that use CFC’s. These older systems are serviced by appropriately certified technicians to be carefully recover, recycled, and reuse the CFC’s . Unrestricted release of the CFC’s from such systems in to the environment is against the EPA ordinance. Many commercial refrigeration recovery/recycling units are available. The author was involved in one consulting project with the recycling system manufacturing and supply company. The experience gained from this project was helpful to come up with a conceptual design that was substantially different from that of the company. The conceptual design was presented to group of students for design of the prototype. This paper discusses the design procedure from concept to the development and testing of the recovery system. The paper also discusses the experimental data as a result of the system testing. The outcome of this student assignment was the successful implementation of the capstone design component, and a development of a recovery system that has several salient features, is less expensive, and has a better potential for marketability as compared to some currently marketed units.

I. Introduction

According to the Engineering Criteria 2000 (Ref. 1), Criterion 3 requires that the institutions seeking accreditation of an engineering program demonstrate and document

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Cain, A. C., & Kudav, G. V. (2000, June), Capstone Design Experience In A Thermal Fluid Applications Course, And Development Of An In House Refrigeration Recovery System Paper presented at 2000 Annual Conference, St. Louis, Missouri. 10.18260/1-2--8197