One of the benefits of interning at SyracuseCoE is getting hands-on experience in your field while collaborating with real-world companies. Working with SyracuseCoE staff engineer Brian Carter, two students have completed the build of a hydronic test stand for a U.S. Department of Energy project with SyracuseCoE Startup Partner TKFabricate. The startup focuses on developing affordable, market driven, deep energy retrofit systems for multifamily housing in New York State, beginning with integrated heating, cooling, ventilation and hot water products.
Kiana Abreu, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, 24′ and Andrew Wilson, Mechanical Engineering Technology, Onondaga Community College, 23′ helped to build the test stand that is now installed at the SyracuseCoE HQ building as a Cold Climate Heat Pump (CCHP) Testbed. The CCHP enables the user to record the energy balance across the loops quantifying BTU performance across varying environmental conditions outside, by measuring the heat transfer between two water loops.
“Kiana and Andrew have completed testing a system that will measure how air to water heat pumps perform in response to the elements outside, in context of being one component of an overall buildings system’s performance,” says Brian Carter. “Students get great lessons through the hands-on experience from working on these projects – there’s really no better way to learn.”
SyracuseCoE’s HQ building is a Research & Development facility for environmental and energy technologies and building innovations. The many laboratories and testing environments make the Center a whole-building, plug-and-play testbed for research, development and demonstration of new technologies and services.