This project was my largest most involved project of the many I was involved with. I was able to work on it and see it to nearly full completion. It all started from wanting to maximize the efficiency of cooling loop two in the Fab 1 building. This was accomplished by converting the heat exchanger loop to a secondary chill water loop. There was a lot that went into this project and most of it was very procedural to make sure the project was properly documented and we received the funding needed. Part of getting the funding need for this project included working the Energy Trust of Oregon to receive an energy savings incentive for the project. This was a huge part of making the project happen because of the requirement of it needing a 3 year payback period or better. We were able to receive a large incentive to move forward with the project and were able to keep cost down and energy savings high to achieve a 2.46 year payback period. The first step to completing this project was to determine an overall scope of work and end goal. My mentor and I spent a long time looking at the system and the piping drawings. I also had help form our drafter; she was able …show more content…
These heat exchangers were sized for cooling 10 times the loads that the cooling loop currently sees due to the Fab 1 building being mostly shut down. The heat exchanger system was way over sized and was therefore giving us a low delta T in the chill water being sent back to the chillers, only a couple degrees. A low Delta T system as described before is considered inefficient, this is why we decided to convert to a secondary cooling loop. A secondary cooling loop gives us a lot of adjustability and also allowed us to shut down a 100hp 3 phase electric motor. Currently the new secondary cooling loop is pumped by a single 35hp 3 phase electric motor with a second in the loop as a redundant back