WELCOME TO THE CHILLER PLANT MINI PROJECT

Project Purpose

The purpose of this group project is to use our engineering skills and basic knowledge of thermodynamic principles to analyze the Oak Street Campus Chiller Plant. This plant provides cooling water to the entire University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana campus, specifically for the University SuperComputer and to lower the temperature of buildings across the campus, through over twenty-two miles of piping on campus. From the Chiller plant visit, we learned that the Lead Engineers have selected to use R134a refrigerant as their method for cooling the water. We also learned from our visit that the Refrigeration Cycle within the plant has four major components that we will analyze and provide in depth research on.  The major components of the Refrigeration Cycle are the Evaporator, the Compressor, the Condenser, and the Expansion Valve. In our analysis, we will provide a line diagram of the plant, provide a table showing the operating parameters of the plant, a calculation of the heat transfer and workflow for each process, and a comparison of the coefficient of performance of the cycle. We will also provide a net work and net heat summarization table for each process, as well as a discussion on the results that the group comes to.