NSF Project Summary

Environmental Control Technology Education for Advanced Building Operation and Management

Need for New Skills

The Laney team NSF project is a response to the need for new skills. New digital technologies are rapidly being adopted within building systems such as heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC), and lighting. Plus, there is growing awareness of operational problems in non-residential buildings.

There is a battle for energy-efficient building operations, and building operators and service technicians are in front line of battle. But, they typically have only limited and outdated knowledge and skills. Thus, traditional curricula needs a much stronger emphasis on control systems, testing, and troubleshooting.

Community colleges are the main source of education in this area, and they have a key role to play in transforming the skills of workers in the buildings sector.

NSF Project Goals

The Laney NSF project main goals were to develop:

  • A new curriculum
  • A new Learning Paradigm
  • Computer-Based Education (CBE) tools

New Curriculum

The new curriculum focuses on developing both Technical Skills and Business Skills.

Technical skills: the new curriculum focuses on developing technical skills in the following key areas:

Basic building science including:

  • Basic building science including: Physics, Math, and How buildings work.
  • Diagnosing and trouble-shooting problems
  • Advanced Technologies
  • Energy efficient design and operations
  • Sustainable design - green buildings

Business skills: the new curriculum needs to teach the following business skills to assist graduates to become effective and successful building operators and service technicians:

  • Working with people
  • Communicating analyses and recommendations
  • Using Business Methods<
  • Doing economic and financial analysis

The new curriculum addresses mapping courses to occupational strands, including both core courses and new, advanced courses funded by the NSF grant.

As part of curriculum development a set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA) objectives for students to achieve were developed for a Problem-Based Case Study (PBCS) exercise with the heating coil portion of the HVAC ePrimer CBE tool. These included:

1. Basic understanding of Building Hydronic Systems and Components

  • Boilers
  • Chillers
  • Cooling Tower
  • Pumps
  • Piping
  • Air Handlers
  • Heating and cooling coils

2. Basic understanding Building Environmental Controls

  • Air Compressor
  • Air Driers
  • Pneumatic piping
  • Water valves
  • Actuators
  • Thermostats
  • Receiver controller
  • Transmitters

3. Understanding the basics of Psychrometrics

  • Dry Bulb & Wet Bulb
  • Relative humidity
  • Dew Point
  • Specific volume
  • Enthalpy
  • Sensible heat factor
  • Specific humidity

4. Testing and Balancing

  • Terminology
  • Instrumentation
  • Thermodynamics

5. Troubleshooting

  • Analyzing information
  • Critical thinking
  • Tools and instrumentation

New Learning Paradigm

Throughout the NSF project the Laney ECT Department has emphasized the Problem-Based Case Study (PBCS) approach to learning. The PBCS premise is that learning is more effective in context.

The members of the NSF project Building Industry Advisory Board defined a number of ‘real world’ problems that would be typical of the challenges that new employees will encounter on the job. Complexity and ambiguity are pluses.

To solve the ‘real world’ problems, the students typically work in teams. They start by defining the actual problem, and then identifying the information & resources needed to solve the problem.

The instructor focuses on:

  • Providing access to information
  • Monitoring the progress of the teams
  • Providing hints to help solve problems
  • Possibly introducing complications as necessary to provide the right level of challenge.

The Laney team built upon previous NSF-funded work on PBCS methods developed at Nashville State CC. That work is documented in www.thecasefiles.org. This included the use of a 6-step learning cycle and associated resources, which were used with the HVAC ePrimer CBE tool being developed.

The intent is to make the software available under Open Source license provisions once it has been adequately field-tested.

The "HVAC ePrimer" Computer-Based Education (CBE) tool

Simulation-based CBE tools can be very effective learning tools. Retention is typically higher than for traditional teaching modes, and content can be mastered much faster.

The main objective of the HVAC ePrimer CBE software is to facilitate trouble shooting of HVAC system problems at system level. HVAC ePrimer can do detailed simulations of the air-handling portion of HVAC systems, and also generates 3D animations driven by the simulations. The software is capable of simulating dynamic control behavior for HVAC systems over very short time intervals – second-by-second.

Students download the software tool from the internet and run it on a local MS Windows PC.

Instructors have an additional told available. Instructors have access to a password-protected web-based server that is not accessible to the students. Instructors can use this web site to manage aspect of the course relating to the software. Thy can create and edit PBCS scenarios in great detail. They can also manage student access.

HVAC ePrimer can support a broad range of curriculum objectives for it is being designed to encourage students to:

  • Understand the operating principles of HVAC system components
  • To diagnose basic equipment problems at the component level
  • To use goal-oriented, problem-solving methods at a systems level to find solutions to more complex equipment problems.
  • Focus on problem-solving methodologies in finding system-level solutions
  • Focus on case-study exercises and ‘project-based learning.

Table CBE-1 illustrates, for a few curriculum areas, the breadth of support that is possible.

At the outset of the NSF project, key conceptual elements of the HVAC ePrimer CBE tool already existed. these head been developed in a prior project accomplished in the late 1990s with funding support from US DOD, US DOE, and US EPA. Key conceptual elements of the CBE tool already exist. Members of our team have already produced working products containing many elements of the proposed CBE tool.

For example, the underlying conceptual structure and features of the:

  • A goal-oriented, problem-solving case-study methodology
  • A highly interactive, animation-oriented Graphic User Interface (GUI)
  • A detailed and accurate simulation engine
  • A database-driven structure
  • An “Open Source” software approach

At the outset of the NSF project, key conceptual elements of the HVAC ePrimer CBE tool already existed. these had been developed in a prior project accomplished in the late 1990s with funding support from US DOD, US DOE, and US EPA. Key conceptual elements of the CBE tool already exist. Members of our team have already produced working products containing many elements of the proposed CBE tool. Likewise, several SPARK component simulation models existed but needed to be refined and tied together at the system level.

NSF Software Development Schedule

The NSF project started in the summer of 2004. A three-phased approach was used to develop the software. In Project Year 1, we assembled a rough and simple “demonstration” model of key elements of the proposed CBE tool in order to conduct selective testing of its main features. In Project Year 2 we continued to refine the features of the model, and focused on developing a detailed working model of the heating coil component of a typical air-handling system. In Project Year 3 we developed the features of the model and expanded the functionality to include all key components of a typical air-handling system. Field testing in Laney courses was accomplished in each of the 3 years or the original project schedule.

However, the Laney NSF project was not completed within the original 3-year period. More time was needed for two key elements: (1) The curriculum development by Laney and (2) the simulation model development by LBNL. Both of these needed more time to complete and the project was extended to a fourth year ending on June 30 2008.

Meanwhile, by the end of December 2007, LBNL generated a stable set of simulation models, and the software appeared ready for field-testing. LBNL and TDG offered to contribute their time in the spring of 2008 to assist Laney in some field-testing of the software product. Laney was ready to field-test in April and field-testing was accomplished within the remainder of the semester. Further field-testing and more complete documentation are still desirable.

During the field-testing in the spring of 2008 the software team tried very hard to bring the older HVAC ePrimer version of the software to a reasonably tested completion status. However in early May 2008, limited resources coupled with difficult debugging issues within the old software platform required that the software team abandon further development under the older software platform. All subsequent development was done on the new FLEX/Flash 9 platform that had been funded under the CEC project. This new 3rd generation platform proved to be much easier and faster to use for making revisions during the field-testing debugging and revisions.

This lack of full debugging of the HVAC ePrimer 2nd generation version should not cause any problems. The new 3rd generation Learn HVAC software is fully available to Laney College, to NFS, and to other community colleges throughout the US and without cost. Recently, the software has been made available on a public download basis so that anyone might download and use it. Some excellent feedback has already been obtained from several sources. Server data structures are now being revised to facilitate more widespread access.

A new non-profit organization – the Institute for the Sustainable Performance of Buildings (SU-PER-B) – will be responsible for maintaining and disseminating the software from the www.learnhvac.org wed site. A CD with the executable code for the student software and the code for the web-based instructor site is being prepared so that both Laney and NSF might have a copy. Also, credit is being given to the important work developed under the NSF grant to the Laney/LBNL/TDG team.

In additional, as noted elsewhere on this site, the intent is to make the software available under open source licensing arrangements after some further testing and documentation is accomplished.