MechSE students improve energy efficiency of Beckman Institute

As part of the MechSE Department’s senior design course, ME 470, seniors Josh Remaley, Matthew Morris, Amy Foltz, and Rebecca Greetis spent three months devising a plan to improve the energy efficiency of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

“Beckman was built over 20 years ago, and the standards were a little bit different than they are now, the energy requirements were different than they are now,” said Emad Jassim, Director of Undergraduate Programs at MechSE. “So they had the opportunity to actually speak with the engineers that designed Beckman, and they came up with methods to save energy in that building and to make it more sustainable.”

The student team worked with the retrocommissioning office in UIUC Facilities and Services, a group of engineers and technicians who maintain and update HVAC systems and maintenance programs throughout campus in order to keep buildings in line with current energy standards and maximize energy conservation and sustainability. This is reflected in their motto, “Saving the World, One Building at a Time.” As of May 2010, approximately 2.6 million gross square feet (56 football fields, or 20%) of the campus academic space have benefitted from the retrocommissioning team.

Two of the four students working on the project, Remaley and Morris, had worked for retrocommissioning already. For them, their project preference was clear, but it was the first time they’d led a retrocommissioning project themselves.

“We kind of went into Beckman and started the process on our own,” Remaley said. “They guided us and gave us some direction and hinted at certain systems, like ‘We think you could probably save a lot here and there.’ So we found different energy conservation measures, or ECMs, as we call them, and we came up with a list of ECMs and how much money each one would save, how much money each one would cost, and the payback time period associated with each one.”

The project was incredibly in-depth and investigative, and allowed the students to look at real HVAC systems in incredible detail.

“The experience was really beneficial, being in another system, seeing another building and how it works, getting that hands-on,” Remaley said. “We got to go to the buildings and look at the systems, the floor plans, blueprints, drawings, everything, just getting more experience.”

In the end, the team proposed solutions based on extensive and detailed analysis of the building’s energy output, which the retrocommissioning team will use in their work on the building. Remaley, still working for retrocommissioning, will get to see the project through to its implementation.