PHYS1510: Thermodynamics - Loss of Heat - Engineering Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Q1. A Canberra-based family plans to convert their free-standing brick garage into a “granny flat”. 

They hire you as a Thermodynamics Consultant to advise them on the heating requirements for their new granny flat. You will need to consider how to heat the granny flat through cold Canberra winters, from April to September inclusive. The granny flat has a rectangular floor plan with dimensions 4.0 m x 5.0 m and a height of 2.5 m. The structure is single red brick walls on 3 sides and has an area of a glass of 3.0 x 2.0 m2 (3.0 mm thick glass) for the windows and door on the 4th side. The flat roof is made of uninsulated (somewhat rusty) sheets of iron (5.0 mm thick). The floor is a 10 cm thick concrete slab. Their granny would like an even temperature of 20 oC all the time for the 6 months of cold weather. 

a) Make an estimate of the loss of heat from the structure during each month assuming an internal temperature of 20 oC and external temperature based on monthly averages for Canberra in the months April to September inclusive. You will need to find out temperatures for Canberra at the Bureau of Meteorology or other sources. You will also need to determine the various thermal parameters for the bricks and windows and roof and floor. You can neglect the effects of convection. 

• Estimate heat loss through radiation from the walls, windows and roof. Work in SI units. 
• Estimate heat loss through conduction via the floor. Work in SI units. 

You should quote the parameters you use in your estimates and provide references/websites for these. Any sensible reference format is acceptable. (eg full website address and owner, IEEE, American Physical Society, OSA). 

The thermal loss calculated in this part will be used to estimate the required heating for the next parts. 

b) Now consider using electric radiators as the heat source. What total power delivery would be required for the electric radiators to maintain the internal temperature of the granny flat to be averaged at 20 oC, assuming that the radiators are running continuously. You will need to stay within the limits set for the maximum current and operating voltage suitable for a domestic residence in Australia. How many 1.5 kW radiators are required? 

c)  A wood-burning stove might be an interesting heating option. Please find out the available energy from burning wood, and assume the efficiency of a quality wood-burning stove as 70%. Find out how much wood would be required from April to September to maintain the average internal temperature at 20 oC. Assume the wood burns all the time. 

d) 

i) Thinking further, you wonder if a heat pump would be a good heating option? You research some heat pumps available in Canberra and discover a new company (S. Carnot and Sons) that sells electrically driven heat pumps with maximum efficiency. Calculate and explain the best possible coefficient of performance you could expect from a heat pump, operating in these conditions, and predict the power consumption that would be required on average to maintain the granny flat at a comfortable temperature of 20 oC in the months April to September. 

ii) Are you confident that the heat pump will indeed run at the maximum performance that you calculated? Explain. 

e) Considering your answer to part

a), what changes to the building structure would you recommend reducing the overall heating expenses? This does not need to be quantitative, but an idea of the potential improvement would be useful. 

State your recommendation to the family for heating their granny flat and justify your choice. 

This PHYS1510: Engineering Assignment has been solved by our Engineering Experts at onlineassignmentbank. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+ Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.

Be it a used or new solution, the quality of the work submitted by our assignment experts remains unhampered. You may continue to expect the same or even better quality with the used and new assignment solution files respectively. There’s one thing to be noticed that you could choose one between the two and acquire an HD either way. You could choose a new assignment solution file to get yourself an exclusive, plagiarism (with free Turnitin file), expert quality assignment or order an old solution file that was considered worthy of the highest distinction.