Chapter News

Join us for our next monthly member meeting. Our topic is Air Conditioning:
A look Into the Past and a Guess Into the Future.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016
11:30am – 1:00 pm
Pappadeux Seafood Kitchen (5011 Pan American Fwy NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109)
Click here to register

Presentation

Starting with a brief historical review, and some of the trends in research, predictions are made as to what the future might be in air conditioning for human comfort. The presentation could be considered “technically entertaining.” Suggesting the fallacies of predictions, it shows the historical delays from defining a concept to the marketing of an actual product. The implications to our industry are noted as well.

About the Speaker

Victor W. Goldschmidt, Emeritus Mechanical Engineering Professor, served at Purdue University from 1964 through 2000. He is currently serving as a Leelanau County Planning Commissioner as well as a facilitator and engineering consultant. During his 36 years at Purdue University, Mr. Goldschmidt was responsible for educating mechanical engineering students, including the direction of graduate research in the HVAC area. Most of his service with graduate students was with the Ray W. Herrick Laboratories with heavy support from the HVAC industries. During early stages of his career, he served as Director of the Engineering Purdue Fellows in Latin America; during later stages he served as department head for Freshman Engineering. Prior to his academic involvement, he worked in Applications Engineering and Development Engineering with Honeywell. Mr. Goldschmidt has taught almost every course in thermal sciences offered at Purdue, as well as a special upper level technical course on the “Creative Process in Engineering.” He is trained as a Synectics (special brainstorming) facilitator and is currently engaged in the development of strategic plans and problem solving sessions.

Advantages of Primary/Secondary Plumbing Design for Integrating Solar and Hydronic Heating in Residential and Small Commercial Systems 

Bristol L. Stickney, BSME
SolarLogic, LLC, Santa Fe, NM

Joint meeting with AEE

Register at: http://nmaee.org/meetinginfo.php?id=69&ts=1453495918

$20.00 ASHRAE Members
$25.00 Guests
$20.00 NMAEE Member
$0.00 NMAEE Meal Deal Membership

Sudexco will provide food services for the event. There is no need to pre-order you meal.

Presentation

Solar heat connects most easily with hydronic heating systems because solar thermal panels provide hot fluid at temperatures that are compatible with common heat loads. However, in order to make the best use of the solar heat when it is available and minimize parasitic heat loss and pump (electric) power, a heating system design must treat all heat sources, loads and storage components as an integrated system. 

In a conventional system, a plumbing design based on primary and secondary loops allows heat to be transferred from the fuel-fired heat source to any load connected to the primary loop. This concept can be successfully extended to two primary loops connected through a heat exchanger for a system utilizing both solar and backup heat sources. The advantages are numerous, but can be summarized as the ability to move heat from any place in the system to any other place at any time. Even components that alternately function as both heat loads and heat sources can be easily controlled in this configuration.

This ‘dual primary loop’ concept has been used as a template in recent years to standardize the design and installation of complex solar/hydronic heating systems with good results.  Well over 100 systems in New Mexico and dozens in other states have been installed in recent years using this configuration. Design details taken from these systems will be presented, utilizing solar thermal panels, heat pumps, boilers, wood stoves and waste heat sources and delivering heat to radiant floors, DHW tanks, pools, baseboard radiators and fan coils. Performance data from remote monitoring and continuous automatic logging is also available to view. Existing installations range from small residences of 1000 – 3000 square feet up to small commercial sized buildings up to 25,000 square feet.

About the Speaker 

Bristol L. Stickney, BSME
SolarLogic, LLC, Santa Fe, NM

Mr. Bristol Stickney is the Chief Technical Officer of SolarLogic LLC in Santa Fe, NM. With over 35 years of experience in solar heating, Bristol Stickney is a well-known authority on solar hydronic heating systems.

Bristol worked with the New Mexico Solar Energy Association for over a decade as Staff Engineer, Director of Research, Associate Director, Treasurer and Vice Chairman of the Board. During his tenure at NMSEA, he developed unique control system concepts that simplify the design of solar heating systems while simultaneously optimized their effectiveness.  These innovations subsequently led to well over 100 of his designs implemented and installed by Cedar Mountain Solar in New Mexico.  It is Mr. Stickney’s knowledge, expertise and experience that have provided the theoretical and practical bases for SolarLogic’s SLASH-D and SLIC products. These streamline the standardized design and control of complex solar heating in buildings.

Prior to his work with Cedar Mountain Solar, Bristol was Chief Engineer of Coyne Solar Manufacturing Company for 5 years, where he designed and oversaw assembly of batch solar water heaters, many of which are still in use.  Bristol also worked as a Research Associate with Amory Lovins at the E-source office of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Bristol Stickney has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maine at Orono.  Bristol holds half a dozen patents in solar/hydronic heating and a patent on a DC hydronic heating control, called the “SETH System,” that reduces the electrical demand of a hydronic heating system by up to 80%.

Bristol currently writes a monthly column on “The 6 Principles of Good Solar Hydronic Heating System Design” which is published in national magazines such as Plumbing and Hydronic Contractor and Plumbing Engineer.  He also has had articles appearing in Solar Pro, Home Power, Radiant Living, and the ASHRAE Journal. 

 

 

Our next member meeting is Tuesday January 19 at Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen. The topic is Update on Refrigerants: Past, Present and Future by Distinguished Lecturer Dr. Eckhard A. Groll, Reilly Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the Director of the Office of Professional Practice at Purdue University.

This presentation provides a detailed review of the past and present refrigerants, and proposes refrigerants and their respective technologies that could be used in the future.  An assessment of their characteristics related to choice of one versus another, and an identification of trends set by these choices will be made.

Click here for more info or to register

 

 

Green Gone Bad: Examples of Unintended Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) Consequences

Speaker:
Derrick A. Denis (Dĕn-āy), CIEC, CIAQP, CAC
V.P. of IEQ for Clark Seif Clark, Inc. (CSC) in Tempe, AZ

“Green Buildings”, for all their merits and good intentions, can be flawed, when it comes to occupant comfort and occupant health.  Green buildings are often carefully designed and constructed to use recycled, recyclable, locally produced, renewable and energy efficient materials, but indoor environmental quality or IEQ is habitually not high on the priority list of even the most vigilant of green designers and builders.

Aside from sometimes overlooking IEQ, green buildings are often plagued by the “Devil that we don’t know.”  New, unproven building materials or installation techniques applied to save money or save the environment can wreak unexpected consequences on IEQ.  Like our bodies, a building is a collection of individual materials (think tissues).  These materials make up building components (think organs).  Groups of components make up building systems (think body systems like respiratory, circulatory, nervous, etc.).  These systems all work independently and collectively in a complicated puzzle make up the whole building or the body.  Insult, remove or damage one piece of this complicated puzzle in a building or a body and the entire structure can become ill. 

Come and learn about a variety of “green building” techniques that negatively impacted actual buildings.  We will discuss the who, what, when, where and why of various failures.  We will provide real world examples.  We will discuss lessons learned in order to help in the mitigation or prevention of these green-gone-bad examples.

Register for this meeting

Thanksgiving is behind us and now it’s time to grind through the next few weeks to get to some more time off. December is about the halfway mark through our ASHRAE year and if you haven’t made it out to a chapter meeting yet, I really suggest you try. We have some great speakers lined up for the upcoming months. 

Last month we had Charles Fledderman present on ethics, allowing many of us to get our 2 hours of ethics PDHs required to renew our PE licenses. We had a very solid turnout and will look at providing ethics training in future years. Happy Holidays

Joseph Higham, PE
President, 2015-2016 
joeh@varitecsolutions.com
505-288-2101

Temperatures are dropping, Thanksgiving will soon be upon us and Christmas will be here before we know it. For those of us who need to renew our PE licenses this year, we are scrambling to get our PDHs completed and documented. This month we will be helping some of you get your 2 required hours of Ethics and for only $40. A real bargain considering you also get a Pappadeaux lunch. I encourage members without PEs to come out and gain some insight into the ethical decision making process.

This morning I participated in a STEM event held at Comanche Elementary. I used an ASHRAE provided activity, “Sliders Gliders” to teach the students about the iterative design process. Please notify me if you participate in a K-12 activity related to STEM. If you are asked to participate in an event, we can provide an activity and materials. The chapter leadership is always willing to step in and help you put something together for students.

I look forward to seeing you at our next chapter meeting and at our Bowling event on November 13^th.

Joseph Higham, PE
President, 2015-2016
joeh@varitecsolutions.com
505-288-2101

Case Studies in Engineering Ethics

This seminar will use case studies to illustrate important ethical issues in engineering professional practice. The seminar will be interactive, involving discussion of the issues and the group together forming conclusions. The seminar provides attendees with 2 hours of professional development credit to meet licensure requirements.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Charles Fleddermann has been on the faculty at UNM for over twenty-seven years and has taught a variety of courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.  He has developed and taught a course on professional ethics for engineers and has been involved in research projects in the area of ethical issues in nanotechnology.  He has also taught professional development seminars on ethics for engineers in New Mexico and elsewhere for the past few years.  The 4^th edition of his textbook, Engineering Ethics, was published in 2011.  Prof. Fleddermann has also served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Education.

Click here to Register

Or RSVP to Stephen Forner at
Stephen.Forner@Trane.com.
Spots are limited.

Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen
5011 Pan American Fwy NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109
Social hour: 11:30 am – noon
Presentation: noon – 1 pm
Date: 10/20/15

Indirect and Direct Evaporative Cooling
Indirect and direct evaporative cooling is not a new concept.  Advancements in use and application, coupled with component echnologies have helped accelerate market awareness of these efficient technologies.  The presentation will review the psychometrics of Indirect Evaporative Cooling and Direct Evaporative Cooling applications. Also, there will be a discussion to address the concerns with evaporative cooling, primarily, scaling and water usage.  Lastly, with real concern of water usage, an examination of the perception of evaporative cooling where people “see” water consumption versus traditional methods that may have higher water consumption.

Speaker Bio
Einar K. Frobom, MBA, PE is the National Sales Manager for Munters Corporation.  His office is located in Chanhassen, MN.  He has been involved with custom design and selection of HVAC equipment incorporating solution concepts such as air-to-air energy recovery,
moisture transfer media, complex custom refrigeration systems, and enhanced IAQ solutions and DOAS systems.  His experience has varied from his role as an application sales engineer, Regional Sales Manager, and currently leading the Munters Commercial Division as
National Sales Manager. Einar holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters of Business Administration, both from the University of Minnesota.  He is also a licensed Professional Engineer within the state of Minnesota. 

Click here to register

In September we held our annual golf tournament. Birdies and bogeys were scored, beverages were enjoyed, bonds were built. We were able to raise over $8,000 for scholarships and scientific research. I want to recognize the tireless efforts of our dedicated volunteers. I would also like to thank our generous sponsors for their support. We plan to hold next year’s tournament at UNM South Course again. Please reach out to any of the chapter’s leaders to provide comments or concerns about the tournament.

Stephen has lined up some outstanding speakers for the coming meetings and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the meetings. Ryan is working on some great social events to help bring us all together in less formal settings and grow our bonds of community.

Have a happy and safe Balloon Fiesta and I hope you don’t spend too much time stuck in traffic.

 

Joseph Higham, PE
President, 2015-2016
jhigham@climatec.com
505-288-2101