Mt.Angel Abbey:
Library HVAC
Team Members
Ali Al-sahaf
Ghassan Mustafa
Santiago Rodriguez
John Slate
Rasitha Wickramaratne
Portland State University Advisor
Dr. David Sailor
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contents
Synopsis 3
Purpose of this PDS report 3
Mission Statement 3
Project Plan 4
Identification of customers 5
Customer Feedback and Interviews Summary 5
Product Design Specification 6
House of Quality 8
Technical Risk Management 9
Conclusions 10
Appendix 11
Synopsis
Mt. Angel Abbey library was designed by Alvar Alto between 1967-1969. The 44,000 square-foot three-story library was completed in 1970. The necessary heating and ventilation system was later designed and installed to accommodate the building heating requirements at the time while making provisions for future upgrades. Currently the library does not have an air-conditioning unit and the heating system does not have capacity to meet the building requirements. The clients have expressed a need for cooling. The existing system is 40 years old and nearing the end of its useful life, therefore upgrading the HVAC system to meet the current heating and cooling requirements of the library is essential. Occupancy comfort and required environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, air quality, etc.) for valuable library reserves play a significant role in defining the design parameters of this project.
Purpose of this PDS report
The aim of this report is to describe the current problems with the HVAC system at the Mt. Angel Abbey Library, and to discuss design goals to improve the system. The issues considered for the redesign of the HVAC include thermal comfort, air quality, material preservation, noise, cost, and aesthetically unobtrusive installation. These design requirements are verified by interviews with the customers. Metrics for an ideal system are described in terms of standards set by ASHRAE. Customer requirements are quantified by design value in a house of quality assessment. Potential risks and consequences for this project are broken down into a risk matrix. The report concludes with a final evaluation of the design requirements and a plan of action for the project.
Mission Statement
The objective of this Capstone project is to model an efficient HVAC system for the Mt Angel Library. The team will design a cost effective system that will maintain a desired temperature and humidity for the safe storage of the valuable collection of books in the library. The team will also select a monitoring system for a vault that has temperature/humidity sensitive materials. Data loggers collect information such as temperature, humidity, and light intensity to calibrate the model for an effective system. The team will utilize the computer-aided simulations using e-Quest, EnergyPlus, and AutoCAD to verify the project goals.
Project Plan
The dates in the table below are goals and deadlines for the project completion. Due dates are tentative and subject to change depending on project requirements.
Project MilestonesTask / Start Date / Finish Date / Due Date
Initial Brainstorming / Sept 26 / Sept 30
Research / Oct 1 / Dec 26
Data Collection (Data Loggers) / Jan 16 / May 11
Current Model Evaluation / Jan 23 / Feb 3
PDS Report / Jan 18 / Jan 30 / Jan 30
PDS Report Presentation / Jan 26 / Feb 5 / Feb 6
Design Evaluation / Feb 4 / Feb 11
Design (Modeling) / Feb 5 / March 17
Progress Report / Feb 27 / March 12 / March 12
Progress Report Presentation / Feb 27 / March 4 / March 5
Computer-aided Simulation / Feb 5 / March 17
Redesign / March 17 / March 31
Repeat Computer-aided Sim / March 31 / April 11
Finalize/ Final Report / April 11 / May 31
- See Appendix A for the calendar.
Identification of customers
Customers are those individuals who establish the requirements for the overall design of this project. There are two types of customers:
1) external customers who are outside of the project team and university environment
2) internal customers who are the team members, advisors, and PSU capstone program.
External Customers
· Victoria Ertelt, Library Administrator, Mount Angel Abbey Library
· Library staff and patrons
· Facility maintenance personnel
Internal Customers
· PSU capstone team members
· David Sailor, team advisor
· Evan Waymire, design advisor
· Faryar Etasami, capstone program coordinator
Customer Feedback and Interviews Summary
The team’s initial interview with Victoria Ertelt was on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 in the ME conference room at PSU. Victoria provided the team with some initial plans and literature showing the library and parts of its mechanical system. She highlighted her concerns with the existing HVAC system and responded to the team’s questions. The following is a list of initial objectives articulated this meeting:
· Improve thermal comfort during winter months when building is drafty and under heated
· Improve thermal comfort during summer months when building air is stagnant and temperatures reach uncomfortably high levels
· Provide safe climate for books—near 50% R.H.
· Provide monitoring system for climate controlled “rare book rooms” including the original vault and 3 other added rooms
On Monday, January 16, 2012, the team made a site visit to the library to meet with Victoria Ertelt for more detailed feedback, to tour the facility, and to begin taking measurements.
Concerns were made more specific and objectives were further refined to include:
· Address thermal comfort specifically in the cataloguing room on the third floor, the auditorium on the third floor and the 30 private carrels on the second floor.
· Address climate control in server room to reduce heat source of equipment
Product Design Specification
Primary Criteria
1. Thermal comfort determined by ASHRAE Standard 55-2004 (See Appendix.) This standard takes metabolic rate, clothing insulation, air temperature, radiant temperature, air speed, and humidity into account. Adherence to this standard will ensure comfort for 80% the majority of occupants doing sedentary activity. The first estimate puts the set point between 68 °F and 76 °F.
2. Ventilation and indoor air quality defined by ASHRAE Standard 62.1-2004 and 2009 Oregon Mechanical Code. This includes metrics such as chemical, biological, and physical contaminants, moisture content, and other factors that affect human respiratory health.
3. There are additional requirements to consider for preservation of books and other physical materials. These standards for public access collections in ASHRAE Applications Chapter 23 do not conflict with thermal comfort but place a greater emphasis on the acceptable ranges for temperature and humidity set points (See Appendix.) For maximum lifespan of collection, set points for relative humidity and temperature are typically 50% and 70 °F respectively. Humidity fluctuation should be no more than ±10%, and temperature no more than ± 9 °F for a type B class of control. This allows for set points to change slightly from one season to another (See Appendix). The system also needs more restrictive filtering of airborne contaminants.
4. Noise contamination should be minimal. This is a study space so the acceptable noise level is less than 40 decibels. ASHRAE HVAC Applications chapter 47 describes procedures for testing and calculating noise levels.
Secondary Criteria
1. This system should have lowest possible installation and maintenance costs after accounting for the primary criteria. The lowest cost will be determined by the lifecycle cost analysis of the system.
2. The energy cost for the system should be as low as possible after fulfilling the primary criteria.
3. Design a monitoring system for the rare book rooms to warn the librarians if the climate is reaching unacceptable levels.
Performance Constraints
The inside and outside architecture must be the same. This building is an Iconic architectural landmark. More specifically this leads to:
· No changes in construction materials
· No changes in the glazing
· No changes in interior design or arrangement
House of Quality
The design parameters with respect to performance are measured against the engineering criteria as well as the existing HVAC system. The importance of each objective is rated by importance on a scale of one to ten and the end users are identified. The results of this comparison of influences are shown in the table below.
Legend: Engineering criteria is given an influence rating with respect to performance parameters on the scale of
(*---*****) from low to high degree of influence, respectively. The existing system is rated relative to performance using the same scale (*---*****) from low to high level of performance, respectively.
Technical Risk Management
Risk / Risk assessment / Reduce the probability of failure / Reduce the consequences of failureFailure in controlling the temperature and humidity in the vault and other rare book rooms / High: Likely event, severe consequence / - Collect sufficient data about the vault temperature and humidity
- Collect data about the books and determine suitable environmental conditions / - Move the Books to a new temporary place until the vault is fixed
- Install temporary heaters, AC units and dehumidifiers
Failure in controlling the temperature in the library zones / Medium: Likely event, marginal consequence / - Set up more temperature and humidity sensors to collect further information about the zones
- Model the library in more than one program to be able to find the “best” design / - In cases of uncomfortably high temperatures, temporary portable air conditioners can be installed
- In cases of uncomfortably low temperatures, temporary portable heaters can be installed
Team designs an energy-inefficient HVAC system / High: Possible event, Severe consequence / - Research more HVAC systems
- Collect sufficient data from the library
- Consult experienced engineers when designing the system / - Use temporary portable devices to control the temperature and humidity until issue is fixed
- Redesign a better and more energy-efficient system
High maintenance costs / High: Likely event, severe consequences / - Gather enough information and data about the devices and machines used.
- Build up a reasonable maintenance schedule for the machines. / - Look for lower cost maintenance companies
- Investigate warranty coverage of equipment
Not meeting customers’ aesthetic requirements
/ Medium: Likely event, Marginal consequence / - Determine acceptable disturbance to existing aesthetics
- Study architects’ aesthetic style / - Reconfigure design to return to original aesthetic
- Find acceptable compromise
Not finishing the project in time due to weather conditions (site visits limited) / Medium: Possible event, Marginal consequence / - Keep track of the weather conditions
-Maximize data collection on site visits / -Have on site staff aid in data collection
-Make informed estimates of missing data to complete model
Errors in the computer simulated models / High: Likely Consequence / -Do a sensitivity analysis on the computer simulated model
-Calibrate the model with collected data / -Overdesign the system
Conclusions
Currently the Mt. Angel library suffers from poor thermal comfort during the cold winter months and the hot summer months as well as an uncontrolled humidity level. Additionally, the climate controlled rooms that house fragile rare books lack an adequate means of monitoring temperature and humidity.
The Mt. Angel library capstone team seeks to redesign the current mechanical system to meet the needs of the staff and patrons who use the library and provide a suitable climate for the storage of books. While a strict limitation on altering the aesthetic of the library interior prohibits changing the ductwork, changes to the system will focus on filtration, boiler performance, sizing a chiller for cooling, and system controls to increase energy efficiency. A monitoring system for the climate controlled rare book rooms will also be designed to insure the protection of vulnerable artifacts.
Appendix
Appendix A
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