María Elena Arce

Integration of the free software GenOpt for a thermal engineering course

Information and communications technologies (ICT) are being used in engineering fields due to multiple advantages that motivate their introduction in university teaching. A course on thermal engineering has been taught for the past 3 years as part of the industrial engineering degree at the University of Vigo. Energy savings and efficiency are common issues. In a practical classroom, one example is the energy simulations of buildings. These tools can be used to simplify the realization of control strategies for different building HVAC systems, which, in most cases, results in an important reduction in the buildings energy consumption over its lifetime. In this paper, the feasibility of using the free software GenOpt for simulation practice and as a tool for teaching and learning inside and outside the classroom is analyzed. These results, together with an analysis of the study plan of the industrial engineering degree at the University of Vigo, allow for the development of new teaching and learning methodologies as well as their implementation in energy simulation practice.

Automating, monitoring, and control of an ICE based micro-CCHP system using LabVIEW and Android

A methodology to automate and control a small-scale combined heat and power system (micro-CHP) is proposed. The contribution of this design is to extend the original plant toward micro-CHP system modeling, thus allowing flexible and efficient system through graphical programming. The automation involves the synthesized system analysis; thereby, human intervention is reduced. It builds on LabVIEW™ software that takes the model architecture to monitor and control de plant. Measured signals and parameters (SQL database) managed by LabVIEW™ are used to issue remote control communication. An Android application was developed to communicate with the database. The integration methodology of automation, monitoring and control energy variables in real-time may be extended to study failures and possible improvements on micro-CHP systems.