What is the Energy Content of a Pound of Condensed Steam? (Part 1)

or, It Depends …

This post started out as an e-mail answering a question from one of the folks taking the Existing Building Commissioning Workshop this year at the Pacific Energy Center.   But as I worked on it, I realized that the question had come up before and that the answer and related concepts might be useful to others. On the surface, it seems like a simple question.  But if you really want to understand, it  is fairly complex.  Thus, this blog post.

Contents

This ended up becoming quite a long post (surprise, surprise, surprise).  So, I broke it up into several posts, which are still somewhat long.  To minimize the pain for someone just wanting the bottom line, I have included a table of contents that will allow you to jump to a topic of interest.  The “Return to Contents” link at the end of each section will bring you back here.

• Contents
• Overview
• The Question
• Confusing Units
• Asking the Source
• Using a Simplifying Assumption
• Seeking a More Exact Solution
• Energy and Phase Changes
• Heating the Water
• Heating the Mixture of Water and Steam
• Heating the Steam
• A Few New Terms
• Enthalpy Depends on Temperature and Pressure
• Thermodynamic Diagrams
• The Spreadsheet Behind the Diagrams
• Focusing on p-h Diagrams
• Applying the p-h Diagram for Water and Steam
• Plotting the Initial Condition
• Plotting the Condition Entering the Control Valve
• Plotting the Condition Entering the Heat Exchanger
• Plotting the Leaving Condition
• Enthalpy Change = Energy Change
• Good News and Bad News
• ENERGYSTAR®, Conversion Factors, and Rules of Thumb
• Benchmarks are Approximations, not Exactamates
• Why so Hight?
• The Basis of the ENERGYSTAR® Conversion Factor
• So, the ENERGYSTAR® Folks are Crazy
• Actually, the ENERGYSTAR® Folks are Not Crazy

Overview

Students participating in the workshop are required to have access to a building that they can use as a living laboratory to apply the EBCx skills we teach in the class.  One of the first things they do is benchmark their building in the LBNL Building Performance Database and ENERGYSTAR^®.  To benchmark, you typically need to convert the annual energy consumption of a facility into some sort of index, typically an EUI (Energy Use Intensity or sometimes also called an Energy Utilization Index). 

EUIs can be stated in terms of site or source energy.  If you want to know more about the difference, this blog post will provide the details.  In the discussion that follows, I will be considering things in terms of site energy.

EUIs typically have engineering units in the form of energy use per unit area per year, such as kBtu/sq.ft. per year (kilo or thousands of British Thermal Units per square foot per year).   Energy is not always billed directly as Btus.  For instance electricity is billed in terms of kWh or kiloWatt Hours consumed.  District steam is often billed as pounds of steam consumed.  To create an EUI from the bill metrics , you need to convert the billing units to Btu’s.  

In the industry, most people are pretty familiar with the conversion factor for kWh to Btus, which is 3.413 kWh per Btu and pretty invariable.   But there is less familiarity with how to convert a pound of steam to Btus, and there can be some variability related to exactly how the thermal energy is billed (kBtus, pounds of steam, thousands of pounds of steam, etc.) and the nature of the steam source (district steam, central plant, or boilers on site).  Bottom line, if you want an exact value, it can become more complex than the single factor used to make electrical conversion.

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The Question

As you may have guessed by now, the question I was asked was how to go about converting pounds of steam to Btus.   The answer is:

It depends ….

One of our students has a facility that purchases steam from a district steam system[i] and their bill states consumption in the form of Mlbs.  For example,

Total usage invoiced in Mlbs –  301.3

Note the letter “M” which means the unit of measure is not simply pounds, it is some multiple of pounds.

So the first part of answering the question is to determine what the “M” stands for, because to correctly answer the question,

It depends on the units of measure.

Most of us (probably because of computers) would take the M to be the SI (System International; often referred to as metric) prefix denoting a factor of one million (1,000,000) as in the MBytes or MB associated with a file or hard drive size.  Thus we might conclude the bill is stating that the facility was being invoiced for 301.3 x 1,000,000=301,300,000 pounds of steam.

Unfortunately, that turned out not to be true in this case.

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Confusing Units

It turns out that there is another system of units that uses “M” for a multiplier;  the Roman Numeral System, where “M” is used to indicate thousands (1,000), not millions (1,000,000).  And to make things interesting, the industry uses both systems and (to me at least), seems to figure you will simply know which one applies. 

If you have been in the industry for a while, that is probably true.  But if you are new to it all (or suffer from aging brain cells like I seem to), then it can be confusing.  

For example, we have control systems that are moving and storing Mb or  Megabytes  of data (where mega is the SI prefix for millions, so millions of bytes).  These systems can be monitoring and managing air handling systems that  are moving cfm of air (where the “c” stands for “cubic”, not the SI prefix “centi” or hundredths, nor does it mean hundred, which is what it would stand for if it was a capital letter in the Roman Numeral system).

The air is often being cooled using electricity, which is often billed as kWh ( where the “k” means the metric prefix “kilo” or thousands of watt hours), and heated, perhaps, with steam generated by a boiler that might be rated in terms of  MBtu (where the M is the Roman Numeral M and means thousands of Btu), or MMBtu(still the Roman Numeral M, but two of them, meaning thousand thousand, or million Btu).

If the boiler is fired using natural gas, then the gas might be billed in terms of MCF (thousands of cubic feet, where the M stands for the Roman Numeral, but the C stands for cubic not the Roman Numeral for 100 and F stands for feet),  or in terms of therms (which stands for 100,000 Btus),

Or the consumption could be billed in terms of Dth (which combines therm with the metric prefix “Deka” or 10 to stand for 10 therms), which is approximately the same amount of energy as an MCF of natural gas (see above) depending on the exact heat content of the gas, which varies with the source of the gas.

Other than nuances like that, we have a pretty straight-forward system of units in the industry. So there should be little confusion about what things mean.

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Asking the Source

The student who asked the question, went to the source (the utility representative) for clarification on the units on the bill.  And in this case, they were told that the M (Roman Numeral) actually stands for K (Si Prefix) meaning that their bill was for thousands of pounds of steam.

So it seems that all that is needed now is to figure out how any Btu’s are released when you condense a pound (or a thousand pounds) of steam.  Frequently, that is done by making an assumption about the amount of energy associated with the phase change.  But if you want a more exact answer, it is a bit more complex than a single number. 

It is also an interesting (in a nerdy sort of way) saturated system physics exercise.  So I thought it would be worth looking at both techniques.

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Using a Simplifying Assumption

There is nothing at all wrong with using a simplifying assumption.  Being math-phobic and often pressed for time in terms of coming up with an answer, I do it all of the time. But if you do it, I think  it is important to recognize the constraints that your assumption placed on the result so you don’t take yourself to seriously if the discussion becomes more precise.  And you need to understand if the assumption can actually be used in the context of a given discussion.

In this case, our simplifying assumption might be based on the fact that most condensate return systems are open to atmospheric pressure at some point, usually at the condensate receiver.  So, we could look at the amount of energy released if we were to condense 1 pound of steam at atmospheric pressure.

You can find this value in a steam table.   Steam tables contain empirically derived values for the various properties of water under different conditions of temperature and pressure.   You can find them in classic publications like Keenan and Keyes,  on line, in the ASHRAE handbooks, or you can even build one yourself as a learning exercise using REFPROP, like I did to create the table below.

Note that the pressures in second column are in absolute pressure units, not the gauge pressure units we are probably more accustomed too.  In other words, the pressures are referenced to a pure vacuum, o psia.   So atmospheric pressure is 14.71 psia or 0 psig.

The value we are interested in is the latent heat of vaporization at atmospheric pressure (highlighted in orange above) which is the difference between the enthalpy of the water vapor (steam) and the enthalpy of the liquid water at the condition we are interested in.  In this case, the value is 970.8 Btu/lb.

To estimate the amount of energy associated with a bill for 301.3 thousand pounds of steam based on the assumption that the steam was condensed at atmospheric pressure, we could do a bit of simple math, like this.

If we needed to convert this to millions of Btu, we would just divide the result by 1,000,000, like this.

We could even create a multiplier that we could directly apply to future bills to give us the answer.

In fact, the student who inspired this post was planning on using this multiplier.  All I have done up to this point is illustrate where it came from and that there is an assumption behind it. 

How much does that assumption impact the accuracy of the EUI and benchmark?  Well,

It depends on the magnitude of the difference between the assumed value for the enthalpy change that occurs when the steam is condensed relative to the actual value of the enthalpy change produced by the thermodynamic processes used to extract energy from the steam at the facility.

It also depends on what you do with the condensate.

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Seeking A More Exact Solution

Truth be told, in the olden days, folks (such as myself) would assume that condensing a pound of steam was worth about 1,000 Btus.  It made the math easier if you were using a slide rule or four function calculator.  And, if you contemplate the steam table above, you can see that it probably meant we were accurate to with-in 10% or better over a pretty broad range of conditions.

But, if you consider what is really going on in the context of the data in the steam table, you realize that assuming the latent heat of vaporization is 970.8 Btu/lb or 1,000 Btu/lb could be wrong because:

It depends on the saturation temperature that the steam condenses at.

For instance, most steams systems deliver the steam to the loads they serve at a pressure that is above atmospheric pressure;  pressures of 3-15 psig are common.  For district steam systems, the delivery pressure can be significantly higher, perhaps as high as 60-150 psig or more, which is subsequently reduced to the 3-15 psig range at the end use facility. 

If you look at the Tariff that defines the rate structure and nature of the service for the utility suppling steam to the facility in question, you find that there are two potential delivery pressure ranges available from their distribution network, 5-10 psig and 20-120 psig and that the company reserves the right to adjust the delivery pressure.

Note that I have assumed the pressures are gauge pressures vs. absolute pressures. 

And, the term “quality” as used in the tariff is probably not the thermodynamic use of the term given the reference to chemical constituents.  In other words, in a pure thermodynamic sense, the “quality” of saturated steam is a measure of it’s wetness; i.e. how much of the steam is pure vapor and how much of it is water that has yet to change phase. More on this to follow.

It is also worth noting that some utilities will deliver the steam in a superheated state, not a saturated state.  All of these things have an impact on the energy content of the steam.

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Energy and Phase Changes;  Understanding the Process

If you perform the experiment I describe in this blog post, you will discover that it takes a whole lot more energy to change the state of water from a liquid to a vapor relative to what it takes to heat the liquid or vapor.  Here is an image from that blog post depicting the results of the experiment.  The paragraphs that follow describe the results.

The red line in the picture is temperature of the water in the tea kettle.  The green dashed line and blue solid line are the temperature of the space above the water.[ii]  Initially, this space is filled with a mix of air and water vapor.   But once boiling starts, with the lid on the kettle, all of the air will be driven out and it will fill with steam.

Heating the Water

If you observe what happens, when I turn on the heat (the purple line is the watts into the burner on the stove), the temperature of the water and the water vapor mix both start to rise.  Since the liquid water is at atmospheric pressure but below the boiling temperature (a.k.a. the saturation temperature) we say that it is subcooled.   During this phase of the experiment the burner was supplying 1 Btu to raise the temperature of one pound of water 1°F.

When the water temperature reaches 212°F, the water begins to boil, which creates steam, filling the area above the water with pure steam, and creating a saturated system where the temperature of both the water and the steam are the same (notice how the green and red lines converge). 

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Heating the Mixture of Water and Steam

Now, even though the burner is applying a steady amount of energy, the temperature of the water/steam mix holds constant.  That is because the energy from the burner is now being used to change the liquid water to steam (a.k.a. a phase change) and during a phase change the temperature remains constant at the saturation temperature. During this time, the  burner was supplying 970.8 Btus for every pound of water that was converted to steam.

When the last drop of water changed to steam, the burner was still supplying energy at a steady rate.  But since the mass of the steam contained inside the teapot at that point was quite low compared to the mass of water that was there when we started (most of that mass was now outside the teakettle condensing on the windows in the kitchen),  there was a lot of energy being supplied to a very small mass.  

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Heating the Steam

At this point, the phase change is complete so all of the energy from the burner is applied to changing the temperature of the steam inside the pot.  Since it only takes about 0.5 Btus to raise the temperature of a pound of steam 1°F at atmospheric pressure (and there was much, much less than a pound of steam contained in the pot) then the temperature spikes rapidly.  This elevation in temperature above  the saturation temperature is called superheat.

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A Few New Terms

If you are new to thermodynamics, some of the terms that you observed in the steam table can be a little scary sounding.  After all, how many dinner conversations (with normal people) have you had where the words “enthalpy” and “entropy” were bantered about.

We are accustomed to concepts like temperature and pressure because we apply them directly in our day to day lives.  A weather forecaster may talk about a high pressure system moving into our area or that we can expect lower temperatures and humidity after a cold front moves through.   Or the recipe we select to prepare for dinner likely specifies a temperature that we should cook the food at, perhaps suggesting that we bring a pot of water to boil in preparation for making some pasta.

But in the course of day to day conversation, we seldom discuss enthalpy or entropy, even though those properties are also changing as we go about our daily lives.  For instance, the weather forecaster could have said that the enthalpy of the air is going to drop after the cold front passes.  And the recipe could have suggested that we increase the enthalpy of a pot of water until it reached saturation and then continue to add energy so that the water changes phase.

The point is that enthalpy, while an unfamiliar term in day to day life, is a property used to measure the total available energy in a substance at a given condition.   So, if we know the enthalpy change that a substance goes through in a given process, we know the energy change.[iii]  

Enthalpy is challenging to measure directly.  But since it is related to things that we can more readily measure, like temperature and pressure and moisture, some very dedicated individuals have been able to experimentally determine enthalpies for various substances and develop relationships that allow us to predict enthalpy based on other measurements and coefficients that are developed via the experiments. The thermodynamic diagrams that follow are simply graphical representations of these results.

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Enthalpy Depends on Temperature and Pressure

If you study the steam table I inserted previously,  you will discover that the latent heat of vaporization – i.e. the energy it takes to convert a pound of water to a pound of water vapor (a.k.a. steam) – varies as a function of the saturation temperature and pressure.  Stated another way, the enthalpy change associated with a phase change will vary with the temperature and pressure that the phase change occurs at.

For example, if the pressure is about 60 psig (or about 75 psia), then the latent heat of vaporization is more like 905 Btu/lb vs. the 970.8 Btu/lb we have discussed for water at atmospheric pressure.  Similar considerations apply for sub-atmospheric pressures.  And, as our experiment revealed, the amount of heat associated with changing the temperature of a subcooled liquid or a superheated vapor is different from the phase change value and will also vary a bit with temperature and pressure.

The steam table above is focused on water at saturation.   There are other tables that document the properties for water that is superheated or subcooled.

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Thermodynamic Diagrams

All of this can be quite complex to wrap your head around.  But a picture can be worth a thousand words, and in the context of our discussion, a thermodynamic diagram can be worth a thousand words.   Using one, you can plot a process and read all of the thermodynamic properties of water (or other substances) directly from the diagram.  And the process plot gives you a “visual” on what is going on.  

Psychrometric charts are a form of thermodynamic diagram that HVAC engineers use to assess an HVAC process. 

Skew T log P diagrams are used by meteorologists to understand the atmosphere.

To understand what happens to a substance as it goes through a process, encountering various  various conditions and states, we can use pressure-enthalpy (p-h) diagrams (what follows uses water as an example) …

… temperature entropy (t-s) diagrams …

… and enthalpy-entropy (h-s) diagrams (a.k.a Mollier diagrams)  ….

These diagrams are extremely intimidating. 

But if you can stay calm and continue to breath normally, they can be quite useful because if you can plot a process on them, you can read all of the properties for the various states directly from the chart. When you compare it to the other options, like playing with the equations of state, which can look like this …

…   or working through multiple tables like the one pictured below and interpolating values …

… they can become quite attractive and you may find yourself inspired to learn how to use them.

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The Spreadsheet Behind the Diagrams

If you are really curious about the diagrams above, you can find the spreadsheet behind them at this link.  Personally, I learned a lot by developing them.  And now that I have them, I can plot processes on them pretty precisely, which lends itself to using a graphical solution to solve and visualize complex thermodynamic processes.

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Focusing on p-h Diagrams

P-h diagrams are a very common way to look at thermodynamic processes like refrigeration cycles.

They can give you a “visual” on a complex process and make it less intimidating for math phobic folks like me.  If you want an example of how useful a diagram like the one above is, take a look at this engineering application guide from Sporlan.  

I don’t want to get to far a-field here, but the point is that diagrams like these can make the analysis of cycles much easier to accomplish once you learn to work with them.   There was a point in my career where I was somewhat terrified of a psych chart.  But now, it is my “go to” tool for understanding air handling system processes. Similarly, I use the various thermodynamic diagrams I illustrated above to help me understand different HVAC and building system processes.

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Applying the p-h Diagram For Water and Steam

To gain a deeper understanding of the amount of heat represented by a condensed pound of steam, I’m going to plot out a pressure reducing process on a p-h diagram.   I could plot it on any of the diagrams, but I chose the p-h diagram because we want to demonstrate what happens as steam is throttled to reduce its pressure and a throttling process can be considered a constant enthalpy process.  So, the two things we are going to work with are represented by the primary axis of the chart.

Let’s look at what happens if the utility serving the facility we are considering is delivering saturated steam to it from their high pressure system at 120 psig.  And let’s assume:

• The facility uses a pressure reducing valve to drop the pressure to 12 psig to serve an insulated pipe header that delivers the lower pressure steam to a heat exchanger, and
• That the heat exchanger condenses the steam to make 180°F hot water, which is then distributed to to the various loads in the facility, and
• That the pressure reducing valve, heat exchanger, and its control valve are all in close proximity to each other so that there is no meaningful pressure drop between the pressure reducing valve and control valve nor is there any meaningful heat loss through the insulation between those points, and
• That the design supply water temperature to the loads is 180°F with the heat exchanger was selected for a 20°F temperature rise on the water side using saturated steam at atmospheric pressure (0 psig, 14.7 psia), and
• As a result, the condensate leaving the heat exchanger is at 212°F, and
• That the condensate is discharged to a system that is vented to atmospheric pressure.

The process is plotted out on the p-h diagram below.

Plotting the Initial Condition

The initial condition is on the saturation line at the delivery pressure of 120 psig or 134.7 psia.  Knowing that the steam is saturated (red saturated vapor curve) at a specific pressure (value on the vertical axis) allows us to plot the entering condition on the chart, and we can read the enthalpy of 1,193 Btu/lb at this condition from the p-h diagram.

Plotting the Condition Entering the Control Valve

The condition entering the control valve represents the result of the throttling processes associated with the pressure reducing valve.   Throttling processes are constant enthalpy processes, so knowing that and that the leaving condition that the pressure reducing valve is controlling for (12 psig, 26.7 psia), we can plot this point on our chart.

Note that we assumed there was no meaningful pressure drop or heat loss in the piping header due to its short length.   Had there been a meaningful pressure drop and thermal loss in the piping system, that would have shifted the entering control valve point down and to the left slightly from where we plotted it.  

Plotting the Condition Entering the Heat Exchanger

The entering condition in the heat exchanger represents the throttling processes associated with  the control valve, which was selected based on an entering steam pressure of 12 psig and a pressure in the heat exchanger of 0 psig.   This results in an initial condition in the heat exchanger that is at the same enthalpy as the control valve entering condition (because throttling processes occur at constant enthalpy) but at the pressure used to select the heat exchanger (o psig, 14.7 psia).  Thus, we can plot this point on the chart based on these two parameters. 

Note that the steam entering the heat exchanger is superheated as a result of the two throttling processes in the delivery chain.  As a result, it has a bit more energy content than it would if it was saturated steam at atmospheric pressure.

Plotting the Leaving Condition

Because the heat exchanger was selected to deliver the design performance requirement using steam at atmospheric pressure, the condensate coming off of the process will be at atmospheric pressure and 212°F, the saturation temperature associated with atmospheric pressure.  This is also the condition in the condensate return main.  As a result, we can plot this point on the chart, which allows us to read the enthalpy of the  condensed steam leaving the process.

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Enthalpy Change = Energy Change

If we know the enthalpy change between two conditions, then we know the energy change.   In this case, the change in enthalpy was from 1,193 Btu/lb t0 181 Btu/lb or 1,012 Btu/lb. 

Good News and Bad News

Taking a closer look at the specifics of the process revealed that for every pound of steam that was condensed in this scenario, we received 42 more Btu’s than our rule of thumb would have suggested or about 4% more.  In the context of the Btu’s received for your dollar, that sounds like a good thing.  In other words, the pounds of steam you purchased delivered more Btus than the rule of thumb suggested.

But in the context of a benchmark, it means that you actually used more energy than the rule of thumb suggested.  Thus, in this case, if we were to calculate an EUI based on our more specific assessment of how the steam was actually used in the facility, the EUI will be higher and the benchmark score will be lower.

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ENERGYSTAR^®, Conversion Factors, and Rules of Thumb

In an effort to try to create consistency, ENERGYSTAR^® publishes conversion factors for various energy sources including district steam.

If I understand it correctly (I don’t actually do a lot of ENERGYSTAR^® benchmarks), when you are entering your data into ENERGYSTAR^®, an “Add Meter Wizard” will guide you to the 1,194 Btu number for a meter that was reporting KLbs (thousands of pounds) of steam. 

As you can see, this would result in a consumption value that is higher than the rule of thumb we developed based on an assumption of condensing steam a atmospheric pressure (1,194 vs. 970.8 Btu/lb) as well as the rule of thumb used by old engineers like myself sometimes (1,194 vs. 1,000 Btu/lb) .  

It is also higher than reality for the situation we explored in the p-h diagram (1,194 vs. 1,012 Btu/lb).  So if you where to benchmark in ENERGYSTAR® using their metrics, it would seem like they would over-state the energy use of your facility if it was a facility where the steam delivery followed the process we traced out.

That means  your EUI would be higher and your benchmark would be lower than it would be if you could insert your actual energy use in terms of the Btus released by the condensed steam vs. the thousands of pounds of steam you used into the ENERGYSTAR^® database. 

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Benchmarks are Approximations, not Exactamates[iv]

The preceding may want you to cry “Foul”.  After all, you are trying to do a good job in terms of running your facility efficiently and it seems unfair to have your score penalized by an arbitrary conversion factor.

But you need to remember that benchmarks are intended to provide a broad-brush comparison of similar facilities in similar climates serving similar occupancies with similar use patterns.  There are a lot of variables at play.  For example, the heat content of gas and other fuels will vary with the source and ENERGYSTAR^® applies arbitrary conversion factors to them just like it does to district steam.

The endnotes in the referenced ENERGYSTAR^® conversion factors document indicate the source for the conversion factors, with the International District Energy Association being the source for the district steam energy conversion factor.

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Why so High?

If you study the steam table, you may find yourself wondering why the International District Energy Association recommended a conversion factor of 1,194 Btu/lb.  After all, that appears to be the latent heat of vaporization associated with an extremely low saturation temperature and pressure.

That is because there is more than the latent heat of vaporization to be recovered.   For instance, in the example I plotted out on the p-h diagram, the condensate left the process at 212°F.  There are quite a few things that you could do with a stream of water at that temperature.   For example, you could run it through a heat exchanger to recover sensible energy and preheat or even heat domestic hot water.

So, in a way, the answer to a modified version of the original question, perhaps along the lines of …

How can I go about capturing the energy that the  ENERGYSTAR^® conversion factor for district steam metered as pounds of steam implies is available?

is …

It depends on what you do with steam and condensate you receive from the utility

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The Basis of the ENERGYSTAR^® Conversion Factor

If you dig around a bit, you can discover the basis behind the ENERGYSTAR^® conversion factor.  I found it in a footnote in a technical reference they provide about Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

What that is saying is that the ENERGYSTAR^® conversion factor is equal to the enthalpy of saturated steam at 150 psig.   It is important to realize that this is different from saying it is equal to the latent heat of vaporization of 150 psig steam, which is the enthalpy change associated with condensing saturated vapor to saturated liquid, or about 858 Btu/lb.

In our field, we are typically interested in changes in enthalpy through a process rather that the specific enthalpy at a given state.  And,  because enthalpy cannot be measured directly, we state the values of enthalpy for a substance referenced to a particular state.  For instance the specific enthalpy of water or steam is referenced to water at 0.01°C and atmospheric pressure.

In the context of this discussion, that means that if we really wanted to capture all of the energy associated with the ENERGYSTAR^® conversion rate for district steam metered as pounds, then we need to not only condense the steam we receive, we need to receive the steam at 150 psig as saturated steam and we need to cool it to just above freezing.

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So, the ENERGYSTAR^® Folks are Crazy

You may be thinking at this point that the ENERGYSTAR^® folks are nuts.  After all, your local utility may not deliver steam at 150 psig, with the delivery pressure of 120 psig in the utility tariff we looked at being an example of that.

But if you compare the enthalpy of 12o psig steam with 150 psig steam, you will find that it is only about 3 Btu/lb different;  about a quarter of a percent.  So in the bigger picture, receiving steam at a lower delivery pressure would not make that much difference in the factor that you would use.

You may think, O.K. I’ll buy that, but it just does not seem practical to cool the condensate to just above freezing in a way that delivered anything useful to the building.  In other words, to provide heat, the source (in this case the condensate) needs to be warmer than what you are trying to heat. 

Given that we are trying to maintain space temperatures in the mid 60°F to mid 70°F range in most of our buildings, a fluid stream that is at or below that temperature range could not be used directly to heat.  Some sort of heat pump (and energy input) would be required to move the heat from the condensate to the place that needed it.

Actually, the ENERGYSTAR^® Folks are Not Crazy

If you take the time to think it through, you will realize that the ENERGYSTAR^® conversion factor is simply forcing us to take a hard look at what it means in terms of energy and resources if our facility uses steam as an energy source. 

There is a subtilty associated with how most (not all)  commercial district steam systems work that we need to consider.  You get a clue about it if you read the tariff for the facility we have been discussing closely (note my highlight).

What that is saying is that the condensate (condensed steam) delivered from the utility will not go back to the utility.  Rather, it will go to the sewer.   That means that all of the energy associated with the hot condensate is literally dumped down the drain and eventually is dissipated to the environment with out serving any useful purpose in the building that consumed the steam (a.k.a. energy and water vapor;  two different resources).

In fact, depending on the temperature of the condensate and the requirements of the local plumbing code and the material in your sanitary piping system, you may actually have to cool the condensate before discharging it.  Typically this is done using domestic cold water (directly or via a heat exchanger) which is then dumped to the sewer along with the cooled condensate.

Bottom line, if  you received district steam at 150 psig, saturated, you actually did receive 1,194 Btus with every pound of steam (and a pound of water for every pound of steam).  The challenge is to understand how to capture as many of those Btu’s as possible before discarding the condensed fluid stream to the sewer.  Because what ever you don’t recover really is wasted energy (and water).

So painful as it may be for this type of system the 1,194 Btu/lb factor allows your steam consumption to be legitimately and fairly compared to the other types of steam systems I will describe  in the next blog post.

David Sellers
Senior Engineer – Facility Dynamics Engineering     Visit Our Commissioning Resources Website at http://www.av8rdas.com/

[i]     A district steam system is a network of piping served by a central plant that provides steam to a large area like the downtown area of a city.

[ii]   The blue line is data from a very low mass thermocouple so that it would react quickly because I wanted to capture the very rapid increase in steam temperature that I anticipated once all of the liquid water had been converted to steam. (For more on how sensor mass can impact the data it produces, see this blog post). 

I had the logger set for a very rapid sampling rate and did no have enough memory to allow it to log data for the entire time it took to boil off all of the water.  So I did not start the logger associated with that sensor until nearly all of the water was evaporated, which is why the blue line only shows up towards the end of the graph.  

[iii]  Entropy is a bit more complicated to grasp, like, I almost flunked thermo because I struggled with it so much.   I think that is not unusual and often take comfort in something John von Neumann said (emphasis is mine):

You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.

They way I have come to think of it is that its basically nature’s way of saying:

There’s no such thing as a free lunch

When we turned on the burner to boil the water, energy flowed from it to the water because the burner was hotter than the water.   But, with out some sort of process that involves doing work, we can not get the energy that flowed into the water converted back into heat or electricity.  Heat does not flow from cold to hot, only from hot to cold.

If you want a bit more detail about all of this, you may want to review a string of blog posts I did that look at saturated multiphase systems.  The experiment I mention and use to illustrate what happens when water boils is part of one of the posts.

[iv]  You may also find the Chapters in Roy Dossat’s book Principles of Refrigeration titled Internal Properties of Matter and Properties of Vapors to be insightful.  He writes about thermodynamic concepts in a very understandable way.  When I found the book, early in my career, my first thought was where were you when I took thermodynamics, which I almost flunked because of my struggle with the math and concepts initially.

[iv]   When I worked for Murphy Company, Mechanical Contractors, more than once, I heard Pat Murphy, our chief estimator mentor some of the younger estimators, saying

we were doing estimates, not exactamates.  

When I first heard him say it, I felt it was really insightful.  And I also think the same is true for a benchmark.

Lags, the Two-Thirds Rule, and the Big Bang, Part 5

In Part 4 of this series, we explored the complex transportation lag that was the key challenge in terms of using a remote duct pressure sensor to control the large VAV air handling system in the case study building. In this post I will show you the solution that grew out of that understanding and discuss a few reasons why not every VAV system will exhibit this behavior. I’ll close out the post with what I have found to be a very useful and  interesting insight that can be gleaned from the apparent dead time that you observe when you upset a control process in a system that is in operation.

Not Every System Will React This Way (Thank Goodness) Reprise

In the first article, I mentioned that this issue obviously does not happen in every VAV system out there. I think one of the main reasons is that many systems are small enough that the transportation dynamic I focused on in the previous article is not significant enough to cause a problem. But I think there are also some other reasons that people may not run into it very often, or maybe have never run into it.

You Learn A Lot the First Time You Start Up a System

My experience at the MCI building occurred during the very first start-up of the system. At the time, I was in the dual role of control system designer and start-up technician. There was no formal commissioning process so, my start-up activities were the commissioning process.

On a current project, depending on the exact design of the commissioning plan, it is possible that the official commissioning provider would not be on site for the very first start-up of the system. They would only come on site after the contractor had taken the system through start-up process and identified and corrected any obvious deficiencies.

You could say that Ray (the service fitter I was working with) and I discovered an obvious deficiency when we blew up the duct, and then corrected it. Meaning that had there been a commissioning provider, when they came into the process, they may have found some issues, but they would not have observed the system blowing up a duct or having nuisance static safety trips. That could create the impression that the lag issue did not exist, simply because it had been addressed.

But, evidence in the field, like:

• Ductwork with wrinkles in it, or
• Ductwork with extra reinforcement angles, or
• An obvious patch in the duct insulation, or
• Pressure relief doors that have been added by change-order

… could suggest that just because the system seems to start smoothly now, that may not have always been the case.

Variable Speed Drives are Very Common

When the MCI Building came online, variable speed drives were not an option for most systems, even large ones, because of the cost and size. That is not the case for a modern project.

As a result it would be unusual for a VAV system these days to not have a variable speed drive of some sort. As a result, when faced with nuisance safety trips (or worse), it is common practice to address the problem by using the acceleration and deceleration settings in the drive to slow the system down. This approach is like the approach I tried when I added restrictors to the pneumatic lines feeding the actuators to slow them down.

As you may recall, I concluded that in doing that, I had traded one problem (safety trips and blown ducts) for a different problem (an unresponsive system that could not deal with a large step change). I believe that improperly applied acceleration and deceleration ramps are likely doing the same thing. But since an unresponsive system may appear to operate reasonably well unless you analyze the trends, this may not be generally recognized. More on this later in the article.

Solving the Problem

Back in the MCI Building days, with my significant emotional event fresh in my mind, I went about re-reading what David St. Clair had written about lags in Controller Tuning and Control Loop Performance . As you may recall from the first post in the series, I had totally missed his point on the topic of lags when I read his book the first time, despite him having it in all capitals, in a large shaded box at the end of the chapter.

Truth be told, it wasn’t so much that I missed the point.  Rather, I simply did not understand the concept at all.

But what was became clear almost immediately as a re-read the section on lags (due to my significant emotional event) was that my problem was the result of lags in the system and that I needed a control process that would be impervious to them. David’s chapter on cascaded control suggested a strategy that would offer a solution.

Modifying the Control-System Design

As you may recall, our initial solution to the problem was to move the remote sensor back to the fan discharge and control for that pressure. In doing that, we circumvented two major lags: the sensor lag and the transportation lag.

But after re-reading David St. Clair’s primer, I realized that if:

• We added a remote sensor, and
• Added a second controller for it to work with, and
• Created a remote duct static pressure control process,

… then we could use the output of that process to adjust (or reset) the discharge static pressure control process set point. In other words, the output of the remote process would cascade into the discharge pressure control process to optimize its set point. The result was a control system configured as illustrated below.

Bear in mind that there probably are several other design solutions that could have worked, especially in this modern area of fully programmable DDC systems.

Developing a Reset Strategy

To implement the solution, we needed to come up with a relationship that defined how the discharge-static-pressure set point would be adjusted as pressure at the remote point in the duct increased above the design target when the terminal units closed their dampers in response to decreasing load. This “reset schedule” is graphically depicted in the chart in the illustration above.

Pneumatic control system operating characteristics generally are defined by a 3 to 15 psi span. As a result, to fully define our reset schedule, we needed to specify the discharge-static-pressure set points associated with outputs of 3 psig and 15 psig from our remote static-pressure-control process. Once we identified those outputs, we could set them up in the controller by making physical adjustments with knobs and dials.

Knobs and Dials

In current technology DDC systems, all of the parameters I will discuss below are set up via the software in the system, either using sliders and knobs in a graphic screen or by setting the value of point in the system via keyboard commands.  But in the olden days, they were set up using the knobs, dials, and sliders that were provided on the controller.  The controllers in the image below illustrate this and are similar to the controllers we were working with at the MCI building.

For the MCC Powers RC-195 controllers illustrated above, the authority adjustment slide is what sets up the reset schedule.  If you want to know more about the details, you will find the instruction manual for it on the pneumatic control resources page of our commissioning resources website.

Controller Action—The General Case

As a first step in figuring out our strategy, we had to determine the “action” of our controller:

Direct Action

With a direct-acting controller, an increase in the difference between the set point and the process variable (0ften called error) will cause an increase in control-process output.  A decrease in the difference between the set point and the process variable will cause a decrease in the control-process output.

Reverse Action

With a reverse-acting controller, an increase in the difference between the set point and the process variable will cause a decrease in control-process output.  A decrease in the difference between the set point and the process variable will cause an increase in the control-process output.

Controller Action Bottom Line

The bottom-line regarding controller action is that a designer determines the failure mode for the final control element (in the case of the MCI building, the inlet guide vanes) as a first step. That information combined with how the system will react when the final control element is moved in response to an increase or decrease in the process variable (in this case, duct static pressure) determines the controller action.

Controller Action for the MCI Building Static-Control Processes

For the MCI Building, because we had selected the IGV actuator to fail closed on a loss of air pressure, a reverse acting discharge static pressure controller was required. In other words,  if discharge static pressure dropped below set point, we needed the output pressure from the controller to increase, causing the inlet guide vanes to open.  If discharge static pressure increased above set point, we needed the output pressure from the controller to decrease, causing the inlet guide vanes to close.

A reverse-acting process allowed us to start the system with the inlet guide vanes closed and the fan at minimum capacity, meaning the fan started unloaded and the potential for immediate over pressurization upon system startup was minimized.

Interlocking the Control Process with Fan Operation

To ensure that the system started this we, we provided a three-way air valve (often called an Electro-Pneumatic switch or EP switch) in shown in the illustration. The equivalent in a DDC system is the proof-of-operation interlock.

When de-energized, the three-way valve blocked the control signal and vented the pressure in the actuator to atmosphere.  When energized, it closed the vent and connected the control signal to the output serving the actuator, allowing the control system to modulate the inlet guide vanes through the positioning relay. The three-way valve was wired in parallel with the fan-motor starter so that, when the starter was energized, the valve was energized.  

This was a fairly common approach for doing this sort of interlock at the time.  But there is an assumption behind it, that being that, if the motor is spinning, air is moving.  That may or may not be a good assumption for several reasons;  for instance, if the belts had broken, the motor would in fact be spinning but there would be no air moving. But to keep from making this even longer, I will set that discussion aside for now.

Reset-Line Points

We knew we needed 3 in. w.c. of pressure at the discharge of the fan to deliver 0.75 in. w.c. of pressure at the remote location on a design day. That requirement established one point on our straight-line reset schedule.

More specifically, we adjusted the knobs and dials on the controller so that, when the signal from the remote static-pressure controller was 15 psig, the set point of the controller was 3 in. w.c. In a DDC system, this would be accomplished by relationships set up in the controlling logic rather than by physical adjustments to a piece of hardware.

To determine the other point on our reset schedule, we considered what would happen on a weekend with only workers on the second floor in the building. Under those conditions, the system would run and the terminal units on the floor with people would follow the load. The terminal units on all the other floors would probably be at or near minimum flow depending on the solar load and thermostat set points.

In the worst-case scenario, we would need to deliver the design flow for the second floor and the minimum flow for the other floors. The calculated pressure drop to the remote-sensor location on the second floor at this flow condition was approximately 0.25 in. w.c. because at this relatively low flow condition compared to the design flow rate, the distribution duct system as quite oversized.

Adding this pressure drop to the 0.75 in.w.c. required to deliver design air flow from the remote sensor location to the zones on the second floor told us that we would need to deliver 1.0 in.w.c. at the supply fan discharge (0.25 in.w.c. + .75 in.w.c.) under this low load condition.  This value became the other point on the reset schedule line.

More specifically, we adjusted the controller so that, when the signal from the remote static-pressure controller was 3 psig, the set point of the controller was 1 in. w.c.  We would fine-tune both reset values based on operating experience during commissioning and the first year of operation.

Considering an Extreme Condition

Once we had made our adjustments, the remote sensor would adjust the discharge set point linearly over the range established for the reset schedule. But, because the output of the remote controller could drop as low as 0 psig and rise to whatever the pneumatic-system supply pressure was (typically 20 to 25 psig), in day-to-day operation, the set point of the controller could potentially be adjusted beyond the bounds of the reset schedule based on the nominal 3 to 15 psig span that was the de facto standard in the industry.

A set point lower than 1.0 in. w.c. would not be cause for much concern. A set point above the 3.0 in. w.c. maximum target, however, could cause nuisance safety trips or worse.

For example, at startup, when duct pressure at the remote location was 0.0 in. w.c., the reverse action of the remote static-pressure controller would cause the controller’s output to drive toward its maximum value. Depending on the throttling range/proportional-band setting of the controller, the output under this condition could be the maximum available main air pressure.

If you extrapolate the straight line associated with the reset schedule to 20 psig, you will discover that the remote controller would have commanded a set point of about 3.8 in. w.c. for the fan discharge pressure controller.   If the fan were to achieve this value, it would have tripped the high-static-pressure limit. 

To prevent that problem, we added a high-limit relay, which limited the signal to the reset input of the discharge controller at 15 psig even if the output from the remote controller drove above that value.   Thus, we limited the maximum reset command to the discharge controller to a set point of 3 in. w.c. In a DDC system, this would be achieved with the control logic rather than by a physical piece of hardware.

Reset Strategy in Operation

The reset strategy allowed us to have our proverbial cake and eat it too, meaning the control process would never allow fan-discharge static pressure to exceed the 3.0-in.-w.c. design target because it was controlling for discharge static pressure directly and the system hardware would allow only a maximum set point of that magnitude, even at startup, when the pressure at the remote point in the system was 0.0 in. w.c.

If, as the system came up to speed, delivering 3.0 in. w.c. at the discharge of the fan created more pressure than the 0.75 in. w.c. we targeted at the remote location, then the output of the remote controller would drop.

This would lower the set point of the discharge controller, causing the inlet guide vanes to close and deliver less air, which would lower the system pressure. If the terminal units opened their dampers to meet an increase in load, the reduction in pressure at the remote location would cause the set point of the control process to again be adjusted upward, but never above the design value.

One Final Thought About Lags

What follows is one of the most useful lessons gleaned from my experience at the MCI building (aside from how to not blow up ducts).

Comparing the Response of a Process to an Upset with Different Levels of Tuning Implemented

The figure below illustrates the response of a system with a proportional-only (P) control process to an upset[i] as the proportional band is reduced gradually from:

1. No control (manual, top black line).
2. Loosely tuned control—a very large proportional band (red line).
3. Tightly tuned control—the proportional band is as tight as it can be without the risk of hunting (blue line).
4. Near-resonance, or hunting (gray line).
5. Over tuned/approaching instability—the proportional band is too narrow, given the characteristics of the system (bottom wavy black line).

The system the controller is applied to is fixed in terms of lags, dead time, system gain, and other factors that dictate how the process will respond.

When you tune a control loop, you start with the a very large proportional band (the red line) and sneak up on the gray line, which is the point at which the system is starting to go unstable.  Then you back off a bit (back towards the red line) so you run on the safe side of stable (the dark blue line).

The reason you sneak up on the gray line is that it reveals the natural period for the control process and system. You can use that parameter to come up with a pretty good set of initial tuning parameters for the control loop.

In the illustration, the upset occurred at t=0 on the x axis.  Notice how there is a period of time after the upset during which nothing seems to happen based on the response of the system (the y axis on both charts).  The purple line with an arrow at both ends illustrates this, and it is called the “apparent dead time” for the process.  It represents the sum of all of the lags in the system.

My purpose in bringing that up is to focus your attention on three facts:

• The natural period for the near resonance control loop (the grey line) is approximately equal to four times the apparent dead time (compare the light blue double arrow head line with the red, orange, green and dark blue double arrow head lines)
• No matter how loosely or tightly tuned a control process is, the response for about the first half of the natural period (about twice the apparent dead time) will be nearly identical no matter if the control process is over tuned, under tuned or non-existent (manual control); contrast the 5 different response curves in the enlarged circle for half the natural period, which is indicated by the red plus orange arrows.
• The tightly tuned control process (blue line) is stable at about the end of twice the natural period.

Once you recognize and embrace these facts, there are very useful in the context of what we are trying to do when we tune a P, PI or PID control loop.

The Quarter Decay Ratio

Technically speaking, for most of our systems, our goal is to achieve a quarter-decay-ratio response to a process upset, as illustrated below.

“Quarter decay ratio” is a fancy way of saying the peak of the spike during the second cycle of the response cycle will be one quarter of the peak during the first cycle of the response.  

It has its roots in the work John Ziegler and Nathan Nichols published in Optimum Settings for Automatic Controllers in 1941.  If you would like to read it, you will find a copy of it in part 1 of the Control Engineering Reference Guide to PID.  There is also an interview in there with John Ziegler, which is kind of cool.

Twice the Apparent Dead Time;  A Very Important Parameter

If you go out and start playing with loop tuning, you will discover that there are multiple versions of this response pattern or something very close to it, depending on the exact combination of proportional, integral and derivative gain you set up for the process.  In fact, you could probably spend hours changing the settings and observing the different patterns.

I speak from experience because when I first tried tuning loops, I did just that.  But at one point, I realized a couple of things,  specifically;

If the first spike doesn’t trip a safety or, worse yet, break something (for instance, blow up a duct), and

If the process settles within a reasonable time frame for the application you are working with

… then you probably have a winner, at least for the time being.[ii] 

But if you keep tripping safeties (or worse) and that was happening with-in less than twice the apparent dead time after you observe the system starting to respond, then you are going to need to eliminate some lags.  That is what the second bullet point in the opening part of this section was about.

Similarly, if you have managed to find a setting that does not cause safety trip (or worse) but now, the system is still trying to find itself hours (or even two natural periods) after the upset, then  you are going to need to eliminate some lags.

To quote David St.Clair:

Eliminating Lags

The table below contrasts lags that are relatively easy and relatively difficult to eliminate.

Eliminating lags to solve a startup/loop-tuning problem can be counterintuitive.

For instance, when I was having trouble getting the MCI Building VAV system online, it seemed things were happening too fast at the inlet guide vanes;  they were opening up way to quickly.  So I slowed them down by adding restrictors. In reality, things were not happening fast enough in terms of the control system realizing the fan had started but that it would be some time before there was meaningful pressure at the remote sensor location.

When I added the restrictors, I was able to get the fan running without tripping the safety, but not able to achieve my set point in a reasonable time or respond to step changes in the system (zone level scheduling or a set point change for instance), so I had simply traded problems.

Ramps vs. Acceleration and Deceleration Settings

In modern times, it can be tempting to try to solve a startup problem like the one I experienced using the acceleration and deceleration settings on a VSD to slow the drive’s reaction to changes commanded by the control system. And, while you may be able to resolve the over-pressurization problem in this manner, you will have added a lag to the system. That means that for even a modest upset or step change in the system, you will have limited how quickly the control process can react to it to recover the set point and resume steady state operation.

Ramp logic is a way around this.  A true ramp limits reaction time until the process variable and set point are inside a window established during startup and commissioning. Once the process variable is inside the window, the limiting function is eliminated from the control process, meaning and the control process is unconstrained in terms of how quickly it can make a change.

Many VFDs have a ramp function built into them.  But just to make interesting, some manufacturer’s call their acceleration and deceleration settings “ramps”.  Having said that, if the drive does not have the setting built into it, you can simply implement it in the control logic that is managing the drive.

Conclusion

While I illustrated the solution to the MCI building problem using the pneumatic control technology we were working with at the time, many of the issues the solution addressed are independent of the control technology because they were about the physics of the system that was being controlled. Thus, they are somewhat timeless in nature and perhaps things you will find useful in the modern world with its DDC technology.  Maybe they are even something you can pass on in your role as mentor, just as the MCI building, David St. Clair, and Tom Lillie did for me.

                                                        

David Sellers
Senior Engineer – Facility Dynamics Engineering                                Visit Our Commissioning Resources Website at http://www.av8rdas.com/

[i]     The term “upset” means a sudden change in the process;  something like a major set point change or a major load change.  Sometimes, the word “step change” is used as a synonym for “upset”.  Start-ups are an example of a event that introduces an upset into nearly control loop in the system that is started up (and often into the systems that support it).

[ii]     I say for the time being because things that affect the lags in a system can change over time.  For instance, in a brand new system the day that you tune the discharge temperature control loop for the very first time may be a design cooling day.  

The system may (probably will) exhibit a totally different response pattern 6 months later on the design heating day since it will be using different heat transfer elements to deliver a similar discharge temperature.   And things will be different during the swing season when the economizer has a role in the process.

And after you finally have tweaked and fine tuned the loop over the course of the first year and found the perfect, year round solution, you may discover it no longer works two years down the road because wear in the linkage system changed the hysteresis or the coils are not as pristine as they were when they were new or the occupancy pattern in the building and related load profile has changed.

Bottom line, loop tuning, just like commissioning, is not a one time event.

Lags, the Two-Thirds Rule, and the Big Bang, Part 4

In the previous blog post,  we looked at common lags that you might encounter in building systems in the general case. In this post, we will look at the particularly complex transportation lag that I ran into in the MCI Building VAV system, which was the root cause behind my significant emotional event.

Some Housekeeping

Before getting into the post, I wanted to do a bit of housekeeping.  You may have noticed that all of the links that were previously on the right side of the blog home page under the “Categories” drop-down menu went away.   That is because all of them and more now exist on our Commissioning Resources website (the place you will go if you click on the little picture of the Pittsburgh skyline on the right side of the home page).

That said, let me know if there is something missing that you are looking for.  I will direct you to its new home or make sure it is available on the Commissioning Resources website if it is not already there.

Lags and the MCI Building VAV System

The VAV system in the MCI Building that is behind this case study had many of the lags described in the previous post. But thermal lags were not an issue since we were dealing with a pressure control process. What’s more, the linkage and valve-plug lags were in the form of the linkage system[i] and blade-rotation mechanism for the inlet guide vanes.

With my pneumatic pressure transmitter located on the second floor and the controller it served located on the roof, the sensor lag was fairly significant because of the long run of quarter-inch pneumatic tubing from the main air source in the control panel to the transmitter and then back up to the control panel: probably in the range of 300 feet or so each way.

In addition, the transportation lag was quite significant and complex and was something I had clearly not considered in my control system design. But it was probably the biggest contributor to the problem I experienced.

An Analogy

In trying to understand this phenomenon initially and then subsequently explain it over the years, I have developed an analogy that is based on pumping water to fill a series of interconnected tanks.

The first tank, which is directly served by the pump, fills three other tanks through lines of different lengths. The 3rd and 4th tanks have two-way valves that drain water back into a reservoir for recirculation to the pump.  

The sketch below illustrates the arrangement under stead-state conditions.

Note that if you click on the image, an enlarged version of it will open up.  Clicking the back-arrow will bring you back to the post.  You can also right click on the image and select “Open image in new tab” as illustrated below.

Granted, water is incompressible and the air in the MCI building system was compressible. But bear with me;  in my experience, explaining this phenomenon using a water and pump analogy will get the basics of the phenomenon we are discussing established.  Having established that, we can then qualify it regarding the differences between air and water to fully explain what happened in the MCI building.  That lesson can then be applied to other large, complex distribution systems.

A Bit about Pump Physics

To understand the analogy, you need to understand how pumps work.  So, while I am not going to go into a full blown explanation of pump physics, I wanted to highlight a few things that will matter in terms of understanding how the pump will interact with the tank.  If you are comfortable with pump and system curves, then you may want to just jump on down to next section (The MCI Building System Arrangement).[i]

To get you up to speed on the pump physics that matter for this analogy, I will use a simplified version of our diagram, limited to a reservoir, one tank with a pump moving water into it from the reservoir and two valves that let water out of it back into the reservoir.

Steady State Operation at Design Conditions

Under this condition, the pump delivers design flow to the tank and each of two control valves allows 50% of the design flow to return to the reservoir.  The depth of water in the tank creates the pressure required to move the design flow rate through the wide open control valves.  Thus, if the tank level is maintained at the level shown above, there will always be sufficient head to deliver design flow through either or both valves.

The total flow rate is the sum of the flow through the two control valves and the head delivered by the pump is the head required to lift the water over the top of the tank and the head required to overcome the resistance due to flow in the piping network.

As a result, for a fixed speed with a fixed impeller size, the pump will operate at a fixed point on the impeller line (the green line on the pump curve) associated with the design head and flow.   The system curve (the orange line) is a parabola that passes through the operating point (the red dot).  Its 0 gpm point is associated with the lift the pump sees; i.e. how much head or pressure it needs to create to lift water over the top of the tank and initiate flow.

Note that from the perspective of the pump, it is serving a fixed system because there is nothing in the piping circuit that it serves directly that can move.  The control valves can move, but they are decoupled from the pump circuit by the air gap between the point where the pump dumps water into the tank and the air gap between the outlet of the valves and the reservoir.

Steady State Operation at 50% Design Conditions

If we close one control valve but keep the other fully open so it delivers design flow, we will have cut the flow in half since each valve was selected to deliver half of the total flow rate.   But since the pressure set by the water level is what drives flow through the valve, to deliver design flow, we still need to maintain the design water level in the tank, even though the flow leaving it has been reduced by 50%.

Since the depth of water and the pressure it creates at the bottom of the tank is what drives the design flow rate through the wide open valve, we could control the pump by measuring the pressure at the bottom of the tank and varying the speed as needed to increase or reduce the flow into the tank.  And since, for a fixed system, the pump speed and flow rate are directly related, a reducing in demand of 50% from the design value would mean that the pump only needed to run at 50% of the design speed to meet the new, lower flow requirement.

The head required to overcome the resistance due to flow for a given flow rate in a fixed system varies as the square of the flow (i.e. the Square Law).  As a result, when we reduced the flow by 50%, the head required to overcome the resistance to flow will drop to 25% of what it was at the design condition.  Since the height of the tank and the discharge pipe did not change, the lift did not change.

The bottom line is that if we were controlling for a fixed pressure at the bottom of the tank, a reduction in flow out of the tank by 50% would cause the pump to slow down to 50% of its design speed.  The operating point would shift down the system curve since to 50% of the design flow rate at a head equal to 25% of the pressure drop due to flow plus the static lift over the top of the tank.

Start-up at 50% Design Conditions

The diagram above shows the tank immediately after a start-up at 50% load.   Since the water level is below set point, the pump ramps up to full speed. As the water level rises, the pump slows down and follows the system curve illustrated previously until it stabilizes at the design water level and 50% of design flow.

The shape of the system curve is not impacted by tank water level.  This is a subtle difference from the situation we will discuss next.

Steady State Again but with a Subtly Different Configuration

If you study the diagram above, you will realize there is a subtle difference between it and the previous diagrams;  the pump discharges into the bottom of the tank instead of the top of the tank.

Now, the lift that the pump needs to provide will be a function of the level of water in the tank.   When the tank is totally empty – at start up for instance – the pump will require less lift than when the tank is at the design operating level and the system curve will shift down from the design operating point and the operating point itself will shift out the pump impeller line.

As a result, the pump will move more than design flow initially.  But as the tank fills, the pump head will increase because the static head imposed by the water level in the tank increases and the flow drops off.

The bottom line is that in this configuration, the water level in the tank impacts the system curve.

The MCI Building System Arrangement

To fully understand the phenomenon we are about to discuss, you will need a general understanding of the physical arrangement of the MCI building air handling system in question.  Thanks to Google Earth and the internet, even though I no longer have the documentation for the facility, I was able to put something together.  The result is the images below. 

This first  image is of the roof top air handling equipment;  note the large, identical fan systems with symmetrical supply (towards the bottom of the picture) and return (towards the top of the picture) duct connections.

This image illustrates a typical floor plan as well as an overview of the building.   The left side of the floor plan would be towards the top of the image above.   The view of the building is from street level towards the bottom left of the image above.

The supply and return ducts from the air handling units in the first image come together into a common supply and return duct riser in the two shafts highlighted on the floor plans.

MCI Building Analogous Components

The analogous components in the context of the tank and pipe network relative to the building are as follows.

• The fans inside the two AHUs are analogous to the pump filling the 1st tank.
• The 1st tank is analogous to the discharge duct from the AHU with is coupled to the distribution duct riser through a string of fittings that represent a significant portion of the system pressure drop due to their configuration and the high velocities that they operate at.[ii]
• The 2nd tank represents the distribution riser, which is a straight run of duct and thus free of fitting pressure drops. However, it is long (the height of the building) and the implication of this is discussed subsequently.
• The 3rd and 4th tank represent the floor level duct distribution duct systems. In the actual building, there are distribution systems for each of the 12 floors served by the air handling system. But for the sake of illustration, I am only representing the top floor and the bottom floor in the analogy.
• The two way valves that allow water to leave the 2nd and 3rd tank and recirculate to the pump represent the VAV terminal units associated with the zones in the building.
• The reservoir represents the return duct system.

The Floor Level Distribution Systems and Their Tank and Pipe Analogy

The distribution systems serving each floor in the facility are fed from the duct riser. Because it is long duct, running the full height of the building, there is a pressure drop across it’s length, even though it is essentially a straight duct running down a vertical shaft.

As a result, the pressure at the fitting that taps the riser at the bottom to serve the 2nd floor distribution system will be lower than the pressure at a similar fitting serving the 11th floor distribution duct system. This difference in available pressure to deliver air to the different floors is represented by the short vs. long pipe connecting the tank representing the duct riser to the tank representing the 11th floor distribution system (the short pipe) and tank representing the 2nd floor distribution system (the long pipe).

A Bit More about the Reservoir

For the purposes of the discussion that follows, the reservoir from which the pump draws its water is assumed to be large enough so that there is no meaningful change in level between what exists at design flow and what exists when the system off, when all of the water drains back to the reservoir. In other words, the pump performance is independent of the level of the water in the reservoir and is only a function of the elevation of the tank it serves, the water level in the tank it serves, and the speed it is operating at.

Pump and Tank System Control

In the analogy, the pump’s role is to move water from the reservoir to the first tank in the network.  The depth of water in the first tank, which represents the pressure created by the supply fan in the analogy, is what causes the water to flow to the other tanks, through the control valves and back to the reservoir.

The pump speed is controlled by the pressure at the bottom of the tank representing the lower floor of the building.  This is analogous to the remote pressure sensor I used to control the IGV’s on the supply fan initially as described in the first blog post in this series.

The pressure at the bottom of the tank is a function of the water level in the tank.   That means that if the water level in the tank is low relative to the desired level, the pump speed will increase, moving more water directly into the first tank and indirectly through the network of tanks and piping to the last tank.  There will be a time lag associated with this process and understanding that lag is the goal of the analogy.

The pump fills the 1st tank by pumping water into it from the bottom. As a result, the head the pump sees will vary with the level of water in the tank. In turn, this will cause the pumps operating point to vary with the level of water in the tank. This is analogous to how the supply fans in the AHU will perform as the duct system becomes pressurized.[iv]

The other tanks in the system are fed from the bottom of the tank ahead of them. As a result, the flow rate to the downstream tanks will vary with the pressure (water level) in the tank that is feeding them. This is analogous to how flow to the various floor level distribution systems will vary as a function of the pressure in the duct riser feeding them.

Finally, overflowing a tank is analogous to over-pressurizing a duct and causing it to fail.

Tank System Operation

Steady State Operation at Design Conditions

The illustration below (a repeat of the first illustration)  represents the system in steady state operation under design conditions.

All the control valves (VAV terminals) are wide open. The pressure sensor in the 4th tank has the pump running at full speed because that is what is required at design to establish the level in the tank required to deliver design flow to the loads.

Notice that:

• The level in the 1st tank is higher than the level in tank 2nd tank, and
• The level in the 2nd tank is higher than the level in tank 3rd tank, and
• the level in the 3rd tank is higher than the level in the 4th tank.  

This is because it is the level difference between the tanks that cases the water to flow from one to the other.   In other words the level difference represents the pressure drop due to flow in the pipe connecting the tanks.  Specifically, for the illustration above, it represents the pressure drop due to flow at design conditions.

These levels are not directly controlled.  Rather, the are established by the pressure in the 4th tank (which is directly controlled) feeding back to the other tanks through the piping network.

Response to a Load Reduction at a Load Served by the 4th Tank

If one of the loads served by the 4th tank dropped (required less water), it would trigger a  chain of events:

1. The control valve would start to close, then
2. The water level in the 4th tank would start to rise, and
3. The pressure at the bottom of the tank would increase (due to the higher water level), and
4. The control system to start to slow the pump down to re-establish the targeted operating level in the last tank.

Those four events are only the beginning of a very dynamic, interactive string of events that will ripple out through the system.

Initially, when one of the 4th tank loads dropped and caused its associated valve to close, the higher pressure (deeper water) in the 4th tank would reduce the pressure difference between the 3rd and 4th tank, causing the flow from the 3rd to 4th tank to drop off, which would cause the level (pressure) in the 3rd tank to rise.

The deeper water in the 3rd tank would tend to drive the flow out of it to the 4th tank back up again.  But it would cause more than the design flow to leave the tank through the wide-open control valves, which in turn, would cause them to throttle (modulate towards the closed position) to try to maintain set point.

In the early moments of this event, since the control system is just starting to slow the pump down and the correct level has yet to be established in the 4th tank, the amount of water coming into the 3rd tank is likely more than required by the loads it serves directly and the loads it serves via the water it delivers to the 4th tank. The combination of excess flow and the throttled valves on the 3rd tank will cause the tank water level to rise, which will tend to increase the pressure difference between the 3rd and 4th tank all other things being equal.

This increased pressure difference will tend to increase flow to the 4th tank, causing its level to rise and the 3rd tanks level to drop, all other things being equal. As a result, the water level (pressure) in the 4th tank would tend to increase, further slowing down the pump to try to bring the system back into balance at the set point.

Response to Other Load Changes

A similar but slightly different dynamic would be set up if a control valve leaving the 3rd tank was to modulate closed instead of a control valve in the 4th tank. And yet another similar but slightly different dynamic would be set up if either of those valves modulated back open again.

The point is that this is a very dynamic process with a lot of interactions between different elements of the system, some of which have no direct impact on the speed of the pump. One of the tricks in tuning a system like this is to try to find a tuning solution that will deliver stable performance under all the operating conditions that the system will see, including modest, gradual changes in load. But the process also needs to be able to react quickly enough to a major load change to prevent overflowing a tank (blowing up a duct).

System Dynamics at a Full Load Start-up

For most systems, a start-up is the largest load change the system will see, especially if the conditions at the loads are out of control. For example, a VAV system that is starting up on a warm morning after a long, hot weekend is likely starting with all the terminal units fully open and demanding their maximum flow.

Due to system diversity, this demand could actually be in excess of the design flow requirement.  As a result, the system will ramp up to full speed but will not be able to achieve its design static pressure set point until some of the zones start to cool off and close their dampers.

The illustration below shows the conditions immediately after start-up on a design day for our tank system.

Immediately prior this point in time, the tanks were all empty. Since there is no water (pressure) in the 4th tank, at start-up, the sensor that is located there to control pump seed commands the pump to full speed and will keep it at full speed until the water level in the 4th tank approaches the targeted set point (the red line next to the tank in the figure).

The pump was selected to deliver design flow to the system at the head established by the design water level in the 1st tank along with the elevation change required to get water to the tank in the 1st place and the pressure drop due to flow through the suction and discharge piping. But when the pump starts with no water in the tank and no flow in the system, the only head it sees initially will be the what is required to lift water to the open tank.

As soon as it starts, the pressure drop due to flow will show up in the piping circuit. But depending on the volume of the tank relative to the pumps flow capacity, it could be a while before the head associated with the design water level in the tank is established. Thus, for a while at least, the pump will see less than the design head. 

And, since the level control system is asking it to run at full speed, it’s operating point will shift out its curve (impeller line) from the design point.  As a result, it will initially deliver more than the design flow to the tank.

As the tank fills, the head the pump sees increases and the operating point will move up its curve. If the pump was being controlled for the pressure at the bottom of the 1st tank instead of the pressure at the bottom of the 4th tank, as soon as the water level in the 1st tank approached the design level (the red line next to the tank in the figure), the pump would start to slow down in an effort to come into balance at the design level.

But, until water flows through the series of tanks and starts to fill up the 4th tank, there is nothing to tell the pump to reduced speed.

Thus, it will continue running at full speed for the time required to establish a level near the design level in the 4th tank. This time lag will be a function of several variables which are discussed subsequently. But for this entire time interval, the pump will remain at full speed, although the flow rate will continue to drop as the additional depth of water in the tank increases the head it sees and pushes it up its curve.

Of course, as the water level in the 1st tank increases, water will start to flow out of it to the other tanks. However, if you consider a special case – a situation where there was a valve in the line connecting the 1st tank to the 2nd tank and that valve was closed –  I think you can see that the pump would continue to run at full speed until it overflowed the 1st tank (ruptured the duct) simply because the signal controlling it was disconnected from what was going on in the tank due to the closed valve.

Returning to our case – where there is not a closed valve – the resistance due to flow and the volume associated with the network of tanks and pipes causes the first tank to initially fill up faster than the other tanks.

For one thing, the rate at which water is transferred from tank to tank is controlled purely by the level in the tanks relative to each other and the pressure drop due to the flow that is created by the level difference in the interconnecting piping.   Increasing the level difference will tend to increase the flow rate. 

But at the same time, the resistance due to flow will also increase as a result of the higher flow rate.  As a result, doubling the level will not double the flow rate;  it will only increase it by a factor of 1.41, which you can predict by applying the square law to the situation.

The bottom line is that until the design level is achieved in a given tank, the tanks downstream from it will not be able to deliver design flow. More specifically in the context of our example, that means that until the design level is achieved in the 2nd tank, the 3rd tank will not be able to deliver design flow to its loads and to the 4th tank.

And only after the design level is achieved in the 3rd tank will it be able to deliver design flow to the 4th tank. During this entire time, the pump will have been running at full speed, potentially over-filling the first tank.

The duration of this transient state will have a lot to do with the volumes of the tanks relative to the flow rate the pump could produce at full speed and the resistance to flow created by the piping interconnecting the tanks. If the volume of the tanks is small relative to the pumps rated flow and/or the flow required by the loads (imagine tall, thin tanks), then the required operating levels will be achieved much more quickly than if the volume of the tanks is large relative to the pump’s rated flow and/or the flow required by the loads (imagine tall, wide tanks).

Similarly, if the piping is small relative to the flow it needed to carry at design conditions (visualize soda straws interconnecting the tanks), it will take more time and/or larger level difference between the tanks to move a given volume of water from one tank to the other. In contrast, if the piping is large compared to the design flow (visualize a subway tunnel interconnecting the tanks), then it will take much less time and/or much less of a level difference to move a given volume of water between the tanks.

It is also important to recognize that during this start-up process, there is water leaving the tanks via the wide-open control valves serving the loads. In other words, some of the water that is transferred from the 2nd tank to the 3rd tank leaves the 3rd tank to go to the loads and is not available to increase the water level in the tank and/or be transferred to the 4th tank.

This further delays the time required to establish the desired operating level in the 4th tank, as does the fact that some of the water entering the 4th tank leaves to go to the loads and thus is not available to increase tank level and ultimately bring the system under control.

System Dynamics at a Part Load Start-up

When the system starts at part load, all of the dynamics outlined above come into play. But in addition, when the pump is running at full speed, it is over-sized for the current load condition.

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that the two way valves representing the loads are all 50% open at start-up. On the plus side, this means the water level required in the 1st tank to deliver design flow to the downstream tanks will be established more quickly. This is because the partially open valves will reduce the flow rate out of the tanks for a given water level compared to what happened when they were wide open.

But, if the water can not get out of the 1st tank or downstream tanks fast enough, it is possible that the 1st tank still will overflow (the duct will fail) before the required operating level is established at the 4th tank. In fact, this could happen more quickly than it did during a start-up at full load (visualize starting up with the valves all closed).

Analogy Bottom Lines

Hopefully, at this point, you can see that there could easily be a combination of system dynamics that would cause the 1st tank to overflow before the desired operating level was achieved in the 4th tank.  And if you can see that, then you probably can understand what I believe to be the root cause behind my blowing up the duct in the MCI building.

Connecting the Dots

More specifically, when we went to start up the system for the first time using the remote sensor to control the inlet vanes on the supply fan (analogous to the pressure sensor on the 4th tank controlling the pump speed), it was a mild day.  Since the building was generally at the ambient temperature because we were just starting up the HVAC systems, many of the terminal units were partially closed (analogous to the valves on the tanks being partially closed.

Since the fan was off, the duct system was not pressurized (analogous to all of the tanks being empty).  When we started the fan, for it to pressurize the remote portion of the system where the controlling sensor was located, it also needed to pressurize the duct system leading to the remote location (analogous to the upstream tanks needing start to fill up before the 4th tank where the pressure sensor was located starting to fill up).

The geometry of the fittings on the discharge of the fan caused the static pressure to build up fairly rapidly at that location and at the same time, delayed the pressurization of the downstream ductwork (analogous to the size and length of the piping interconnecting the tanks impacting how quickly they are able to be filled up by water coming from a tank upstream of them.

All of this time, because the pressure at the remote location in the ductwork was below set point (the level in the 4th tank was below the design water level) the inlet guide vanes at the fan were held wide open (the pump ran at full speed).

As a result, the fan was able to generate a pressure that exceeded the pressure rating of the discharge duct even though the pressure at the remote location had not come up to set point (the pump completely filled up the first tank and caused it to over-flow before the 4th tank was at the targeted operating level).

And while there are some differences between the tank system and the MCI VAV system that is behind this string of blog posts, I am hoping that you can see that what happened in the MCI VAV system on the day of my significant emotional event was very similar to what happens in the tank analogy in a scenario where the pump can fill and over-flow the 1st tank before the required operating level is achieved in the 4th tank.

Differences Between the Pump and Tank Analogy and the MCI Building Air Handling System

As I mentioned at the start of the post, there are some differences between my tank analogy and the air handling system in the MCI building that will come into play.  The primary differences are:

• Air is compressible and water isn’t.
• For all practical purposes, the fan does not have to lift the air to the top of the system where-as the pump had to lift water to the tank level.
• As a result of the preceding, the system curve[v] for any given operating condition will always pass through 0 cfm at 0 in.w.c. But the operating curve for a VAV system will not do that as the load drops off because if it is being controlled for a fixed pressure someplace in the system.
• The pumping analogy is about filling volumes. The fan system is about pressurizing volumes. In the fan system at start-up, the volumes represented by the duct system are already full of air at the ambient pressure, the fan simply adds more air to the volume to elevate the pressure to the targeted design static pressure.
• If the 40 or so feet of straight duct on the discharge of the fan at the MCI building was a closed volume, the ideal gas equation says it would only take about 14 extra standard cfm of air to pressurize it to 4 in.w.c. But, if it was open ended, then the fan that was in place, operating at the design speed, could never reach 4 in.w.c. because of how much air was exiting at the other end of the duct.
• The reality for a large VAV system will be between the two extremes described in the previous bullet and will be a function of the size of the volumes and the nature of the resistance between the various volumes in the system.

So there you have it;  my theory about why the lags introduced by the configuration of a large distribution system can make the system challenging to bring on line and tune.

In the final post of this series, I will touch on some of the reasons that I think not every system will exhibit the problem I experienced at the MCI Building. And I will look at how we solved the problem in the MCI building, a solution which is also applicable in the general case if you are dealing with a large, complex system.

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David Sellers
Senior Engineer – Facility Dynamics Engineering     Visit Our Commissioning Resources Website at http://www.av8rdas.com/

[i] If you want more details on pump physics, you can probably get them by exploring the Energy Design Resources Design Brief titled Pump Optimization and Assessment, which can be found on the Energy Design Resources page of our commissioning resources website.

[ii] For more on linkage systems kinematics, visit Economizers–The Physics of Linkage Systems at https://av8rdas.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/economizersthe-physics-of-linkage-systems-2/.

[iii] One of the interesting about large ducts (in a nerdy sort of way) is that while they may be operating at a fairly low friction rate due to the large cross-section they contain relative to the perimeter, the velocities at the low friction rate can be quite high. As a result, the velocity pressure will also be quite high. Since duct fitting pressure drops are a direct function of velocity pressure, a string of closely coupled (interactive) fittings like those that existed at the MCI building to get from the roof, into the building and over to the distribution shaft can represent a significant pressure drop, even though the friction rate of the duct they are serving is fairly low.

[iv] The Howden/Buffalo Fan Engineering Manual includes a discussion of fan system start-up characteristics, including performance curves in Chapter 15. That chapter also illustrates how inlet guide vanes impact fan performance. You will find a link that will allow you to obtain a free electronic copy of the manual at https://av8rdas.wordpress.com/2017/11/15/howden-buffalos-fan-engineering-handbook/.

[v] It is important to remember that VAV systems operate over a family of system curves with the steepest one generally associated with the condition created by all terminal units operating at minimum flow and the shallowest one created by all terminal units operating at maximum flow. If, for either of these curves, or any one in between, I were to slow the fan down and nothing in the system moved, then the operating point would go through 0 in.w.c. and 0 cfm at 0 rpm This is different from the operating curve that a VAV system follows as the load drops off while it attempts to maintain a fixed pressure at some point in the system. You will find more information about this at http://www.av8rdas.com/affinity-laws.html#Profile.

Lags, the Two-Thirds Rule, and the Big Bang, Part 3

In the previous post, we took a look at why moving the sensor that controls discharge static pressure in a variable volume fan system out into the distribution system will save energy compared to controlling for the pressure at the fan discharge. But when we moved the sensor out into the system, we introduced a lag, which can make the control process more challenging to tune and can even lead to a significant emotional event like the one I described in the first post in this series.

In this post, we will take a focused look at what lags are in the general case.  In the next post, we will look at them in the context of  the specific case of the system where I had my learning experience.

Lags

Whether you realized it or not, you probably have observed a lag in a control process. For instance, when you raise the set point on the thermostat in your house on a cold day, you probably hear a click, as a relay closes its contact in response to your adjustment. Though this may seem immediate, there is a small lapse of time between your turning the knob or pushing the button and the relay pulling in and then another between the relay pulling in and the furnace starting.

These lapses in time are termed “lags” in control industry jargon. The accumulation of all of the lags in a control process is what the folks who tune control loops call the “apparent dead time.”

An Example

To illustrate lags and apparent dead time, I am going to use a thought experiment centered on the steam-heat-exchanger control process shown below[i] . The numbers in the diagram indicate points in the control process where a lag occurs. The chart shows the effect on water temperature.

For our experiment, I am going to use a pneumatic controller because that is what I was working with when I made my “discovery.” The reality is that most of the issues I was up against would have existed with a DDC system, just in a different form. At the end of the day, to design a good control process, you need to understand the physics of the system and equipment, and a lot of that will be independent of the control-system technology you are using.

At the start of the experiment, the system is steady-state with a hot-water-supply temperature of 100°F. Just prior to Time = 0 on the chart, we place the controller in “manual,”[ii] and at Time = 0, we increase the output by a fixed amount in the direction that will cause the steam valve to open. Technically, this is called inserting a step change, which upsets the steady-state condition.

With a heat exchanger, when you do this, the system temperature will rise and then level out at a new steady-state condition, as illustrated in the chart in Figure 1. Technically, we would say the process exhibits a first-order response to the step change.

What happens between Time = 0, the point when we turn the knob on the controller, and Time ≈ 0.5, the point when the temperature of the water starts to climb (blue circle on the chart)? That is the apparent dead time. The apparent dead time is the accumulation of all of the lags in the system, which occur at the points numbered from 1 through 8.

Item 1 – Controller and Set-Point-Adjustment Lags

With an analog mechanical controller, there will be a slight lag between the time we first touch and begin to turn the set-point knob and the time the controller reacts. For one thing, it takes a finite amount of time for a human to move a knob through an arc. Also, moving the knob compresses a spring or bellows or moves a lever, and there is some measure of hysteresis associated with the mechanism.

With a DDC system, despite the electrical signals moving at the speed of light, there still is a lag, one between the keystroking of the command and the time the keystrokes become electrical signals. What’s more, depending on the structure of the control system and process, a lag could be introduced by the control network, if the set-point change was initiated at an operator workstation not directly wired to the controller where the control-process code is executed. The duration of the lag will be a function of the network architecture, traffic level, and communication speed and could range from seconds to, in the case of an older legacy system, a minute or more.

Item 2 – Signal-Transmission Lags

For a pneumatic valve to move, a volume of air needs to flow from the air source through the controller mechanism to the actuator. Most pneumatic actuators balance air pressure against a spring force  as illustrated to the left.

More specifically, air pressure is applied to one side of a diaphragm to generate motion in one direction (blue arrow in Figure 2). This force, in addition to moving the piston and shaft, compresses a spring, which generates an opposing force (red arrow in Figure 2). The pressure of the fluid in the pipe also plays into the balance of forces (green arrow in Figure 2). The direction in which it is applied will vary with the design of the valve and the direction of flow through it.

The volume of air needed to move to the actuator as a result of our step change will be a function of how much motion the change in pressure will create in the actuator shaft when all of the forces are multiplied by the cross-sectional area of the piston or diaphragm used to generate the force and transmit it to the actuator shaft.

The speed at which the volume of air is delivered will be a function of the pressure difference available to drive the air through the pneumatic tubing and controller internals and the resistance to flow associated with the path.

The timing will be a bit non-linear because, at the beginning of the change, the pressure difference across the system will be greater than it will be toward the end. For example, if moving the dial changes the controller output from 5 psi to 8 psi and the air source to the controller is 20 psi, when the process starts, 15 psi (20 – 5) will be available to drive air to the actuator, but by the end of the process, only 12 psi (20 – 8) will be available.

With a DDC system using an electronic signal, the change in value happens at the speed of light and is inconsequential as a lag. The electronic/electric actuator, however, may introduce a lag that is significantly larger than the one introduced by a pneumatic actuator. That is because most electric/electronic actuators used in HVAC use a geared-down motor, as we typically need a significant force or torque to move a valve or damper, but are limited in how much power we can send to the actuator via the current flowing in the wire serving it.

As a result, it is challenging to find an electric/electronic actuator with a full-stroke run time of less than 15 sec. Thirty- and 60-sec run times are common; large actuators delivering a lot of torque may have full-stroke run times of 90 to 120 sec. In contrast, a pneumatic actuator with enough air pressure and volume could go full stroke in a second or two. In fact, it may need to be slowed a bit to avoid air or water hammer.

Item 3 – Linkage-System Hysteresis

In practical terms, with a linkage system, hysteresis means “play” in the linkage. Consider a quarter-inch pin attached to a link that is used to connect to a second link, where the hole provided for it in the second link is a half-inch in diameter. If, at the start of motion, the pin is in the center of the hole, the linkage physically connected to the pin will need to move one-eighth of an inch before the linkage containing the hole comes into contact with the pin and starts to move.

On the return stroke, the pin will need to move a quarter of an inch before it contacts the other side of the hole and begins to move the link containing the hole in the other direction. This will introduce both a delay and non-linearity into the control process because the timing of the lag will vary with the direction of motion.

Item 4 – Valve-Plug/Disc Characteristics and Hysteresis

In a manner like what was described for the linkage system, there can be some “play” in the connection between the valve stem and the valve plug or disc immersed in the fluid stream. In addition, the flow-vs.-motion characteristic of the valve plug may not be linear.

Item 5 – Steam-System Response Time

When the steam valve in our experiment opens, the rate of steam flow increases because the resistance to flow represented by the position of the valve plug decreases. Initially at least, this causes pressure in the steam-distribution system to decrease, which has quite a few elapsed-time implications associated with it, especially when a saturated or superheated fluid is involved.

For one thing, there may be a pressure-regulating valve managing the local steam-distribution pressure that will need to react to the pressure drop. Meanwhile, the control system managing the boilers that are generating the steam will need to adjust the firing rate to match the new load condition. How quickly this happens depends on the boiler fuel and burner-control technology.

For instance, a coal-fired boiler with a chain-grate stoker will probably not react as quickly as a gas-fired boiler.  And the reaction time for the boilers serving a massive campus distribution system will likely be different from what occurs with boilers serving a facility locally.

With a saturated or superheated system, a change in pressure means a change in fluid state and characteristics. For example, the saturation temperature of steam at 24 psia (approximately 9.3 psig) is about 238°F; at 23 psia, it is more like 235°F.

All of this impacts how long it takes to re-establish a flow and heat-transfer rate at the new steady-state condition and contributes to apparent dead time.

Item 6 – Thermal Lags

The heat exchanger and the water it contains represent thermal mass. Changing the temperature of that thermal mass will take time. The complexity of the response will be compounded by the fact the water is flowing, as opposed to stationary.

Item 7 – Transportation Delays

There will be a lag between the time the water inside the heat exchanger changes temperature and the time the higher-temperature water reaches the sensor that provides the input to the controller. If the sensor is near the heat exchanger, most of the time, the lag will be relatively small.

The lag, however, will be influenced by the thermal mass of the piping system and the quality of its insulation because some of the energy in the water will be used to elevate the temperature of the piping between the heat exchanger and the sensor and, thus, will modestly reduce the temperature of the water that reaches the sensor until steady-state conditions are achieved.

Item 8 – More Thermal Lags

Virtually every temperature-sensing element—be it mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic—has some sort of thermal mass associated with it. For a pneumatic controller, a common approach is to use a system consisting of a hollow bulb connected by a capillary tube to a bellows. The system is filled with a liquid-vapor mix that operates as a saturated system. As a result, if the temperature is increased, some of the liquid vaporizes. Since the mix is in a confined volume, the result is a pressure increase, which causes a bellows to expand or contract and move something in the controller to cause an appropriate reaction.

For all of this to happen, the metallic enclosure containing the fluid needs to change from the initial steady-state temperature to the new temperature associated with the steam-valve opening. Because the sensing elements in a water system usually are installed in a well so they can be replaced without the system being drained, the mass of the well needs to warm before the sensing bulb warms.

The illustration below is based on logged data from an experiment in which heat from a hair dryer was applied to a temperature sensor with and without a well.

Note that:

• The well does make a difference. However, even without a well, a lag is introduced between the time heat is applied (gold dashed line in the example) and removed (blue dashed line) and the time the system reacts (solid red and green lines).
• With or without a well, because of the impact of the thermal mass, the temperature keeps rising after the heat source is removed.
• With or without a well, the sensor “thinks” the local environment is warmer than it is (72°F to 74°F) for quite some time after the heat is removed.

You can see a video of this experiment and watch how things change in real time via the meter along with a more detailed discussion of thermal lags, including another experiment demonstrating the lags associated with two temperature sensors that have very different masses in a previous blog post titled 4-20 ma Current Loop Experiments – Thermal Mass Effects .

Hopefully, this has given you some insight into what lags are and how they can impact a system and its control processes.

In Part 4 of the series, we will look at the lags I was dealing with in the MCI building, with a focus on what turns out to be a very complex transportation lag. I believe there are also reasons aside from the system lag dynamic that result in this problem not occurring on all projects and I will highlight them in this blog post.

Finally, in Part 5 of this series, we will look at how we solved the problem in the MCI building, a solution which is also applicable in the general case if you are dealing with a large, complex system.

                                                        

David Sellers
Senior Engineer – Facility Dynamics Engineering     Visit Our Commissioning Resources Website at http://www.av8rdas.com/

[i] While our discussion has been based on a case study centering on a variable air volume system, all the concepts apply to variable flow water systems.

[ii] What this means is that we disconnect the output of the controller from the mechanism in the controller so that the controller has not influence on it. In this operating mode, the out put of the controller will only be affected by the manual adjustments we make.

Taylor Engineering’s COVID-19 White Paper

Just a quick note to let you know about a very timely, well researched, well-written, well thought-out and practical discussion of the COVID 19 crisis in the context of the HVAC systems many of us deal with as a part of our jobs.

On Thursday, Taylor Engineering published a white paper that takes a very thorough look at the topic as you can see from this screenshot of the bookmarks.

Steve Taylor, the paper’s primary author and a leader in our industry, certainly has the expertise, technical background, and relationships to put something like this together having been a member of  the committee responsible for ASHRAE Standard 62.1 Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality for 8 years, serving as its chair for 4 of those years.

Currently, he is member of ASHRAE’s Technical Committee TC 4.3 which addresses ventilation and demonstrates his ongoing passion for the topic.  Steve mentioned to me that he read 80 some research papers in the course of developing this, another sign of his passion and dedication.

If you are involved in any way with commercial building operations, in particular their HVAC systems, I think you will find this to be a valuable resource and reference, including links to other information on the topic.  So please follow the link, down load a copy, and take the time to read  through it.  I think you will find it to be well worth the time.

                                                        

David Sellers
Senior Engineer – Facility Dynamics Engineering     Visit Our Commissioning Resources Website at http://www.av8rdas.com/

Lags, the Two-Thirds Rule, and the Big Bang, Part 2

In the previous post, I describes a significant emotional event I experienced in an early attempt to use a remote duct static pressure sensor to control a large variable air volume system. The remote sensor approach represented an application of the two thirds rule to make the system more efficient.

In this post, I will look at why a remote duct static pressure sensor has the potential to deliver energy savings compared to controlling a VAV system based on a fixed discharge pressure.

Why Worry About the Two-Thirds Rule

At the time of the project behind this blog post, the reason for wanting to apply the two thirds rule was a personal and corporate goal to be energy efficient. But it was not a code driven requirement.

However, work by ASHRAE during the late 1980’s and 1990’s resulted in Standard 90.1. which in so many words, mandated applying the two thirds rule as a code requirement for many systems. But before we look at what current codes would require, let’s explore why the two thirds rule concept saves energy in the first place.

Two-Thirds of What?

The real question about the two thirds rule for many is “two thirds of what?” I am frequently asked this question by operators and technicians who have heard of the concept and are interested in its benefits but are uncertain of how to implement it.

In other words, is the rule saying the sensor should be at a point that is:

• Two thirds of the horizontal distance from the discharge of the fan to the most remote point in the system on a plan view of the facility? Or,
• Two thirds of the vertical distance from the fan to the most remote floor? Or,
• Two thirds of physical length of the longest duct run from the fan? [i]

As we will see, all those interpretations would work. In fact, the rule could have been called:

The “75 to 100 percent out the duct rule” (per the Honeywell Gray Manual)[ii], or

The “15/16ths” rule, or

The “27/32nds” rule.

The bottom line is it was intended as a guideline, not an exact solution, that encouraged moving the sensor out into the distribution system.

Contrasting Discharge Pressure Control with Remote Pressure Control

To illustrate the benefit associated with controlling for a remote duct static pressure, lets contrast what happens for a simple system if it is control for discharge pressure vs. a remote pressure. This example is based on a SketchUp model I use for Existing Building Commissioning (EBCx) training, which has its roots in some of the systems I have seen in existing hotels serving meeting rooms and ball rooms.[iii]

Controlling for Discharge Pressure Near a Fan Location

Consider the system illustrated below (the ceiling of the mechanical room has been removed to reveal the distribution ductwork serving the two zones in the ballroom above).

Technically, we could control fan speed based on the pressure near the fan discharge—for instance, after the two elbows and transition (Point A).

Engineering calculations similar to those illustrated subsequently under Controlling for a Remote Duct System Pressure reveal that a static pressure of 1.102 in.w.c. is required under design conditions at Point A to deliver design flow.   Meaning that this metric would become the set point for a control process referencing that location.

As the load in either of the zones served by the system drops and the terminal unit dampers throttle, the discharge pressure will tend to go up. Upon detecting this, a properly designed control process would reduce the fan speed (or, for the MCI Building, close the IGVs) to return the discharge pressure to set point.

Examination of the fan-energy equation …

… reveals in this scenario, energy would be saved for two reasons. One is that the flow rate dropped, meaning one of the terms in the numerator became smaller, which will make the result smaller even if nothing else changed.

But the pressure drops through the filters, coils, and other components of the air-handling unit that are upstream of the discharge sensor also will drop due to the reduced flow rate. The square law [iv] …

… allows us to quantify this for the new flow condition based on the design flow conditions.

As a result, the total system static pressure would be reduced, even if the discharge static pressure were held constant. Thus, a second term in the numerator of Equation 1 became smaller.

Clearly, then, a system designed to reduce flow as load drops will save energy compared with a system with a steady flow rate, even if the design discharge static pressure is held constant for all hours of operation.

If the square law is to be believed (in other words, if you have a modicum of respect for Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler and those that followed), the pressure required to move air from Point A to Point B also will drop as flow drops. But because the control process is forcing discharge static pressure to the design requirement—even though that amount of static is not required at the reduced load condition—the terminal-unit dampers will need to throttle to dissipate the unnecessary pressure the fan is creating, which can also create a lot of noise.

Therein lie the improvements that can be achieved by applying the two-thirds rule.

Controlling for Remote Duct-System Pressure

Consider what would happen if we located the sensor immediately ahead of the point where the duct splits to serve the two ballroom zones: Point B in the first illustration(which just happens to be about two-thirds of the way to the terminal-equipment location).

A Cautionary Tale

Before going further, there is a point I feel compelled to make about the specific code requirements that would drive a design decision process to use remote duct system pressure to control a VAV system. 

In the first draft of this post, at this point in the discussion, I wrote:

For current design projects, ANSI/ASHRAE/IES 90.1, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, prescriptively requires that duct static-pressure-sensor location be such that a set point of no more than one-third of total system static-pressure drop is required. Clearly, then, a sensor cannot be located at the discharge of a fan.[v]

At the time, I didn’t have the most recent copy of the referenced guideline, but I did have the 2019 ASHRAE Applications Handbook, so I referenced that.

One of my colleagues, in their review, pointed out that despite what the handbook says, my statement was not correct, which is why I include this little cautionary tale.

ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2019, now says:

Static pressure sensors used to control VAV fans shall be located such that the controller set point is no greater than 1.2 in. of water. If this results in the sensor being located downstream of major duct splits, sensors shall be installed in each major branch to ensure that static pressure can be maintained in each.[vi]

The standard includes an exception that allows facilities with DDC systems to implement a trim-and-respond control strategy like the one recommended in ASHRAE Guideline 36, High Performance Sequences of Operation for HVAC Systems,[vii] to be used to achieve compliance. DDC systems may or may not be required depending on a number of variables as illustrated below, which is a screen shot of ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2019 Table 6.4.3.10.1 – DDC Applications and Qualifications.

I believe the current language in 90.1-2019 is unchanged from what the 2016 version of the standard would require. That implies that the 2019 ASHRAE Applications Handbook reference is to a version prior to 2016.

My point here is that even though the handbook represents ASHRAE’s position on a subject, in the code compliance scenario associated with a design process for a new construction project or a retrofit, the code in force is what will govern. In other words, I should have gone straight to the source and dug out the code and verified what I had read in the handbook before I wrote those lines in the first draft of the blog post.

Having said that, even if you go straight to the source; i.e. the governing code, things may not be as clear as you would hope, especially in existing buildings.

Existing Building Complications

In the mid-1980s – when my significant emotional event in the MCI building happened, neither of the standards and guidelines referenced above existed. In fact, the technology for performing a trim-and-respond strategy did not exist. Thus, our goal was to deliver the benefits of a concept that was being used as a general guideline for improving energy efficiency.

If I was working on the MCI project today (the project associated with the story behind this string of blog posts), either as a new construction project or as a retrofit, I would need to comply with the more specific language of the governing code. But the governing code may or may not be the most current version of a given standard, depending on where the jurisdiction is in terms of updating the codes they enforce. As a result, things can start to get a little “murky”.

And in my experience, in the existing building operations arena, this can get even “murkier”. Most of the time, the facility operators and technicians I get to work with have a passionate desire to improve the performance and efficiency of their systems. Frequently, they are crippled in their efforts by the realities of their operating budgets and equipment. Every year I run into one or two operators who are working with systems that have pneumatic controls and who don’t have the budget to upgrade to DDC. But what they do have is the skill and interest in making what they have work better once they understand how to go about doing it.

That means that for operators in a facility that does not have the technology in place to comply with the “letter of the law” (a trim and respond strategy for controlling duct system static pressure), the approach we used for the MCI building could deliver a significant portion of the savings that can be achieved. 

Returning To our Discussion

For a sensor located at point “B” in Figure 1, engineering calculations would reveal that a pressure 0.975 in.w.c. is required at Point B to maintain flow to the two symmetrically ducted zones served by the system. Thus, if we were to use our control process to maintain this pressure, we would deliver the design flow rate to each zone.

If we used one of the terminal units to do zone-level scheduling by stopping airflow to half of the ballroom if it was not in use when the other half was, the demand for airflow would be cut in half. But, if we maintained 0.975 in. w.c. at Point B when the inactive zone shut down, we would deliver design airflow to the half of the ballroom still in service.

The image below illustrates the pressure drop calculation just to give you a sense of what something like that looks like..

The graphics are screen shots from the ASHRAE fitting database, which was used to do the math for the fittings in the analysis.

In addition to looking at the design flow rate, the calculations also  look at what would happen to the pressure drop in that section of duct if the flow were reduced 50 percent using both the square law and the more precise One Point Eight Five to One Point Eight Nine Law. Because the difference between what the square law and what the more refined calculations predict for this short duct run is in the third decimal place, I simply will reference the numbers as predicted by the square law for the purposes of this discussion.

How it Works

Under design conditions, if a sensor at Point B were to meet its targeted set point of 0.975 in. w.c., the fan would be forced to deliver 1.102 in. w.c. at Point A because that is the pressure needed to overcome the resistance due to flow between the two points and deliver 0.975 in. w.c. at Point B. This is the same result as would be achieved by a system that simply controlled for the design static pressure at Point A.

However, at 50-percent flow, a system controlled by a sensor at Point B would force the fan to deliver only 1.007 in. w.c. (the 0.975 in. w.c. required to deliver design flow to either zone from Point B plus the 0.032 in. w.c. required to deliver 50 percent of design flow to Point B). Thus, at part load, the total system static requirement is reduced from what would be achieved in a system controlling for a fixed discharge static pressure.

Good News and Bad News

The Good News

By moving the sensor used to control fan static pressure out into the duct system, we can maximize the energy savings in a variable-flow application. The same is true regarding the location of a sensor controlling the distribution pumps in a variable flow pumping application.  In fact, if you want a detailed look at that, you will find it in a string of blog posts I did a while back about applying the two thirds rule to a pumping system, complete with pump curves and everything.

In any case, selecting the location for the remote sensor is a balancing act, with energy savings pushing the sensor to the most hydraulically remote branch in the system and caution pushing the sensor back toward the fan because the most hydraulically remote branch can be challenging to identify in a large system.  And, it can move around in the system as load conditions change. In fact, for a large system using the remote sensor strategy, it may be desirable to install several sensors and use low-signal-selection logic to dynamically choose the appropriate sensor.

The Bad News

The bad news is that moving a sensor out into a distribution system introduces a lag into the control process. For the system in the model, an air molecule leaving the fan discharge will take only about 1.5 seconds to reach the remote-sensor location, so the lag is likely not much of an issue. But for a large high-rise, the implications can be much more significant.

For example, for one of the systems in a 475 foot tall high rise that I did work in, on a time-rate-distance basis, an air molecule that left the AHU on the top level would take 10 to 12 seconds to reach the terminal unit it served on the lower level.   This slide from a presentation I do about the project, which includes a scale drawing of the duct system will give you a sense of what I mean.

For the MCI Building, the distance to the remote sensor was in the range of 300 ft and the time-rate-distance lag that was introduced probably approached 8 to 10 seconds.

Because of the dynamics of large systems, the lag we are discussing is much more complex than a simple time-rate-distance assessment would lead you to believe. I will discuss why this is in a subsequent blog post. But for now, the take-away is that lags can make control-process tuning challenging and generally are the enemy of tight control. This was the issue I failed to recognize with my initial fan static pressure control system design for the MCI Building and is the reason I blew up the duct.

In the next post, we will take a closer look at exactly what lags are in the general case. Once we establish that, I will do a post that looks at the lags I was dealing with in the MCI building, with a focus on what turns out to be a very complex transportation lag.

Finally, I will wind up the series by looking at how we solved the problem in the MCI building, a solution which is also applicable in the general case if you are dealing with a large, complex system.

                                                        

David Sellers
Senior Engineer – Facility Dynamics Engineering     Visit Our Commissioning Resources Website at http://www.av8rdas.com/

[i] This is the generally accepted meaning. Interestingly enough, nobody really seems to know where the “two thirds” part came from. Chuck Dorgan did some research about that at one point and concluded that it evolved from a recommendation made in a technical guide developed by one of the major control system vendors in the late 1970s that targeted providing support for their field technicians who were running into the requirement at the time. Personal discussion with Chuck Dorgan, approximately September 20, 2010.

[ii] The Honeywell Gray Manual is an industry classic and was the text book Honeywell used to train new engineering recruits after hiring them. Originally published in 1934, it went through 21 editions with the latest I know of being 1997. While, it is not current with regard to the control system technology in our buildings these days the fundamental principles it discusses like psychrometrics and different applications still apply and are explained in layman’s terms and I frequently recommend it to folks coming into the industry, especially if they do not have a technical background. You can download a copy at http://www.av8rdas.com/honeywell-gray-manual.html.

[iii] Incidentally, the duct configuration on the discharge of the fan in the model and related system effect is abysmal; in class I also use this system as an example of how not configure the fan discharge and also to discuss what you can do about it if you find it as an existing condition. For a longer discussion of system effect that uses an earlier version of this model, visit this blog post.

[iv] The square law has its roots in the Darcey-Weisbach equation, which assumes fully developed turbulent flow. ASHRAE research has demonstrated that for most applications, the Square Law is really the One Point Eight Five to One Point Eight Nine Law because there are places in our systems where we do not have fully developed turbulent flow. But for field work, preliminary estimates and developing a general understanding of how things work, it is reasonable to use an exponent of 2 instead of 1.85 – 1.89. Plus, it’s easier to do the math on a slide rule that way (I still carry one around).

[v] 2019 ASHRAE Applications Handbook, Chapter 48, page 48.8.

[vi] ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2019, paragraph 6.5.3.2.2 VAV Static Pressure Sensor Location, page 235.

[vii] ASHRAE Guideline 36-2018, paragraph 5.1.14 Trim & Respond Set-Point Reset Logic.

Lags, the Two-Thirds Rule, and the Big Bang, Part 1

This string of blog posts started out as an ASHRAE Engineers Notebook Column.  But they got to long for that format, so I decided to post them here.  The story is an example of how I was mentored by a building and it’s systems and learned a number of lessons that I use to this day. 

My mentor in the story is a building that was, at the time, known as the MCI building, on the riverfront in St. Louis Missouri, where I lived and worked during that period of my life.  I believe it is now called the Deloitte Building.  In any case, it is the teal colored building in the picture to the left.  I will call it the MCI building as I write this because that is how it was known to me at the time.

The Situation

From 1984 – 1986, I had the privilege of working for Murphy Company under Tom Lillie in their Design/Build department as a combination field engineer, start-up engineer, and control system designer.  I can’t remember what it actually said I was doing on my card, but basically, that is what I was doing.

One of the projects I worked on was the MCI Building.  Although the industry was moving from pneumatic control to Direct Digital Control (DDC), the owner wanted to stick with pneumatics, primarily because of budget constraints, but also because of uncertainty about how well their operations staff would be able to deal with the new technology.  Tom placed his trust in my abilities as a control-system designer and startup technician for the large (two, nominal 90,000 cfm units in parallel) variable-air-volume (VAV) air-handling system that would serve the facility. My work on that system brought about a “significant emotional event”— a phrase coined by Jay Santos, PE, co-founder of Facility Dynamics Engineering.

The Story

Significant Emotional Events

A significant emotional event is an attention-grabbing, eye-opening incident that changes the way you think about and approach something in a very profound, fundamental way. This event clarified one of the principles that David St. Clair wrote about in “Controller Tuning and Control Loop Performance, a Primer” —namely, “IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE LAGS!”[i]

Setting Up the Significant Emotional Event

With Tom’s blessing, I applied the two-thirds rule to the duct static-pressure-control process for the Inlet Guide Vane (IGV) equipped MCI Building supply fans, using a high-quality pneumatic control system featuring two-pipe transmitters and Proportional plus Integral plus Derivative (PID) capable receiver controllers. At the time, the two-thirds rule was an emerging energy efficiency recommendation that advocated moving the duct static pressure control sensor from the fan discharge to a point out into the distribution system. But it was not yet a code or efficiency standard requirement.

I will discuss the rule in more detail in the next post , in this series, and you can find an illustration of it applied to pumping systems in a previous string of posts.  But suffice it to say that our engineering calculations indicated that we should install the sensor that would control the supply fan static for the system at the supply main on the second floor using a set point of 0.75 in. w.c. to accrue the two-thirds rule benefits. In terms of linear feet of duct, this turned out to be about two-thirds of the distance from the 12th floor penthouse location of the air-handling unit; just saying.

When the time came to bring the system on line for the first time, I stationed myself at the remote sensor so I could watch what was going on there.  Ray Baltimore, a very gifted control system pipe fitter that I was working with was up in the penthouse 12 floors above me coordinating things there and monitoring the process from that perspective.

Upon initial startup, the discharge-static-pressure safety switch (3.5-in.-w.c. set point, 4.0-in.-w.c. duct-pressure class) tripped, even though the pressure at the sensor location that I was monitoring never reached the targeted set point of 0.75 in. w.c.

Believing we were dealing with a control response problem; we narrowed the throttling range of the controller and restarted the system. After the discharge-static-pressure safety switch tripped again, and after consulting the specifications to verify the duct-pressure class, the safety switch setting was increased to 3.75 in. w.c., the throttling range of the controller narrowed further, and the system restarted.

Not Quite Connecting the Dots

Following yet another safety trip, restrictors were added to the pneumatic tubing serving the IGV’s to slow them down and allow downstream pressure to build without exceeding the discharge safety set point.

When we restarted the system, discharge-static-pressure safety switch did not trip. But after 10 minutes, the actuators had not moved far enough to get the system to set point because of the large actuator volume and the reduction in flow imposed by the restrictors.

After experimenting with several restrictors, we concluded that we had simply traded a safety trip problem for an unresponsive system problem. So, we removed the restrictors, and increased the safety setting to 4.0 in. w.c. Upon restart of the system, the discharge-static-pressure safety switch tripped once again.

The Big Bang;  A Significant Emotional Event

Assuming there was a tolerance on the duct static-pressure class rating, we increased the discharge-static-pressure-safety-switch set point to 4.25 in. w.c.

That’s when it happened: the big bang. Ray, always the humorist and trying to put a positive spin on things radioed …

Well, at least we know the duct pressure class is right.

Sadly, I had just performed an (unintentional) destructive test verifying the duct system pressure class. While destructive testing may have its place for verifying that things like airbags in a car will work in an actual crash, it is not the approach recommended by SMACNA for verifying duct pressure class.

As the fan spun down, David St. Clair’s words hit home. And it was also apparent why “It’s all about the lags” was in all capital letters, with an exclamation point, in an extra-large font, in a highlighted box at the end of the lags chapter in his book.

Up until then, I had not appreciated what he was saying at all. Now, I fully appreciated it and had added my very own exclamation point.

Solving the Immediate Problem

I desperately wanted to capture the savings associated with using remote duct pressure instead of fan discharge pressure to control the supply fans. But to maintain schedule, I concluded that I would need to move the transmitter to the fan discharge and control the system based on that for the time being.

Ray and I made plans to gather the necessary hardware and make the change.  The tinner was already putting the blown duct joint back together and figured they would have the system ready to go again before they went home for the weekend. But between the changes that Ray and I would need to make to the control piping and the fact that some of the parts we were having air-freighted in would not arrive until Saturday, it looked like we would be working the weekend.

Another Mentoring Story

When I called Tom to tell him the bad news and what our plans were, he kind of chuckled and said something like …

Well Dave, we aren’t the first people to do this two thirds rule thing, so there must be a way to make it work and I bet you guys will figure it out. And I’m sure your temporary plan will work until then.

But you and Ray have been working hard and you have that new little baby sitting at home.  God put us on this earth to do certain things and it wasn’t to constantly be messing around with buildings.   So go home and take a break.  I’ll meet you on site Monday to brainstorm a solution and help get the temporary control plan working. 

Pretty cool;  like I said, I can’t remember the exact quote, but I won’t ever forget the intent and message about paying attention what is important in life.

The Temporary Fix

After moving the sensor to the fan discharge, we were able to tune the control loop to allow the system to start and achieve stable operation at the targeted 3.00 in.w.c. set point without a safety trip.

One obvious solution to our problem was simply to let go of the concept of controlling the system based on pressure at a remote point. But if we did that, we would not be delivering the efficiency we promised our client.

And in the bigger picture having both been mentored by Bill Coad,[ii] Tom and I wanted to make our system as efficient as possible. Thus, my quest to understand the reason I could not get the system to work using a remote sensor continued.

Not Every System Will React This Way

(Thank Goodness)

I want to emphasize that I am not saying this problem will occur in every VAV system out there and that controlling static pressure based solely on a remote sensor in the duct system won’t work. Obviously, it works in many situations.

But in this particular case, due to the dynamics of the MCI Building system, the duct-pressure-class limit was exceeded at the fan discharge before the desired operating pressure was reached at the remote-transmitter location; i.e., our problem was related to a lag. This caused me to realize that the dynamics of some systems may require a different approach for achieving the benefits of duct static pressure control based on a remote pressure in the system.

Coming up On Lags, the Two-Thirds Rule, and the Big Bang

In the next post, I will look at exactly why using a remote static pressure sensor to control a VAV system will save energy compared to simply controlling for discharge static pressure.

In a third installment, I will take a closer look at exactly what lags are in the general case.

In the fourth installment of the series, I will look at the lags I was dealing with in the MCI building, with a focus on what turns out to be a very complex transportation lag. I believe there are also reasons aside from the system lag dynamic that result in this problem occurring on some but not all projects, occurring on all projects and I will highlight them in this installment.

Finally, in Part 5 of this series, I will look at how we solved the problem in the MCI building, a solution which is also applicable in the general case if you are dealing with a large, complex system.

In closing, I wanted to thank the Engineering Notebook team for their initial feedback on the article, which helped me focus it and address some technical questions it brings up.  And I also want to thank Michael Ivanovich and Scott Arnold of AMCA, who jumped in and helped organize the original article into the more manageable string of five articles that have evolved to this string of blog posts.

                                                        

David Sellers
Senior Engineer – Facility Dynamics Engineering     Visit Our Commissioning Resources Website at http://www.av8rdas.com/

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[i]     This is still available for purchase, at www.straightlinecontrol.com/index.html and is well worth the money if you are trying to understand PID control loops in practical terms.

[ii]     Bill Coad was the vice President of McClure Engineering when I interviewed there in 1976. In the 1980’s Bill wrote an article for the ASHRAE Journal titled Energy Conservation is an Ethic. (ASHRAE Journal, vol. 42, no. 7, July 2000) But he was thinking that way long before he wrote the article. That philosophy, conveyed to me during my interview in 1976, was one of the things that caused me to want to get into this field. You could say it changed my life. You can find a copy of it on the ASHRAE website at https://www.techstreet.com/ashrae/standards/energy-conservation-is-an-ethic?product_id=1719726#jumps

In addition, we have a page on our website with a lot of the other things Bill wrote, which are still applicable today since he dealt in fundamental physics. http://www.av8rdas.com/bill-coads-writings.html.

New Resources

Its been a while since I have posted and my (potentially annoying) holiday post has been sitting there for over a month.   All I can say is that I have been working on FDE’s commissioning resources website to add some new content and it simply took some time.

The good news is that there is some (potentially useful) new information available there, and this is a quick post to give you a “heads up” about a place where you can find:

• Some of the design briefs that once existed on the Energy Design Resources website, which has disappeared, and
• Videos that walk you through the answers to the Bureaucratic Affairs Building Heating Hot Water System Logic Exercise that we have on our Commissioning Resources website.

Energy Design Resources Design Briefs

A bit over a month ago, I discovered that the Energy Design Resources website that is linked to multiple references in the Resource List and the Existing Building Commissioning Skills Guidebook no longer exists.  So there are a bunch of links in both of those documents that will not longer work.  I am working to fix that and get copies of both resources with repaired links up on the website.

Meanwhile, I made a page on our commissioning resources website where I am posting the EDR resources that are referenced by both of those documents so the will be available to you.  On the one hand, you could consider them to be “dated” since some of them were written over 10 years ago. 

But on the other hand, since they are based on physical principles that Isaac Newton identified over 300 years ago, which still seem to be reasonable explanations for the phenomenon going going on in building systems, you could decide that they are potentially useful after all (in case you did not guess it, this would be my position).

And since they were created with public benefit funds, I figure that posting them for folks to access does not violate any copyrights.   I want to emphasize that I am only doing this to make what I believe to be useful information available to folks who might need it.  If you have issue with this, please let me know and I will either take the information off the website or work with you to come up with a mutually agreeable way to make the information available.

Bureaucratic Affairs Building HHW System Logic Exercise Answers

For quite a while now, we have been using SketchUp models as a way to provide training experiences and there are a number of model based exercises that you can work  your way through on the Cx Resources website.  One of these exercises involves modifying the logic for a heat exchanger in the mythical Bureaucratic Affairs Building in Golden Girl, Missouri to add a reset schedule to the control process. 

The answers to the exercise have available in the form of logic diagrams, a narrative sequence and a points list for a while now.  But I have been working on a series of informal videos that walk you through the answers and I completed the first two of them today and posted them on the website.

These videos give you an overview of the problem and then illustrate one possible answer for adding a reset schedule to the existing heat exchanger control process, which uses a fixed set point.  Adding the reset schedule will save energy and improve comfort.  The details of why are discussed a bit in the videos and in more detail in the information provided to support the exercise.

My point here is to let you know they are available.  I also plan to do a couple of videos that look at some of the other logic associated with the HHW system in the Bureaucratic Affairs building including the occupied/unoccupied cycle logic and the pump lead/lag sequencing.  This logic is included in the hhw_logic_diagram_vweb_-_full.xlsm file that is provided on the answers page.  The videos will simply walk you through how it works.

David Sellers
Senior Engineer – Facility Dynamics Engineering

Flexible Flyer; a Holiday Story

Like it or not, you have probably noticed that I endeavor to do a “seasonal” blog post of some sort around the holidays.  Past topics have ranged from cute pictures of my granddaughters to snow crystals to George Hinke’s depiction of life at the North Pole.

I even managed a semi-technical post about how while most of us are having a magical, often romantic Christmas Eve and day, there are folks out there doing their job to keep the lights on and keep us safe in our homes and hospitals and doing other things we take for granted, like keeping the internet running. So take a minute to say thanks for that and remember them if you happen to be reading this.

At this point, I will pause for a moment and say that if you find my occasional forays into the non-technical to be annoying, you should stop right here and come back in a week or so because I plan to have a new technical post up by then.  Or, wait for the February ASHRAE journal because I have been given the honor of being invited to be on the team that writes the Engineering Notebook column and my debut will be in the February edition.  Alternatively,  you can roll your eyes and continue anyway because you are kind of intrigued.

Having done due diligence and forewarned you,  I will continue with what will become a (what I believe to be romantic) holiday story in the spirit of previous holiday posts.

In writing those posts, I realized the skill set needed is somewhat different from the technical writing skill set that I have been honing for the past 20 or so years of my career.  And, I realized there is apart of me that is interested in learning how to do non-technical writing.

Initially, this was triggered by finding my Dad’s letters home from the war, including ones written right before and after he went into Omaha beach as a Sea Bee, which I found gave me a lot to think about, especially when I “connected some dots” from conversations I had with him while growing up.  But in starting that process, I also realized that I had a lot of wonderful gifts from my ancestors in the form of memories and that I wanted to honor them somehow.

So, I am in the process of writing a string of stories that I will occasionally self publish as a series of books.  I am even working with a professional writer, Rachel Starnes, who is patiently mentoring me in this regard.  She has been a joy to work with and given me a lot of insight and guidance.  So, if you are exploring writing and looking for someone to work with, you may want to get in touch with her.

It turns out the self publishing thing is actually fairly easy using one of the self publishing applications like Blurb.  I used that resource to make Kathy a (well received) picture book that was the history of our relationship as a gift on the occasion of our 10th anniversary.  It looks like a for-real book like you would buy at a bookstore,with a glossy cover jacket and everything.  But there is only one copy; the one she has, which is kind of cool.

In any case, in terms of recording (my version) of the family history, the idea is self publish a series of story books that I will give as gifts to our children and grandchildren.  This will likely cause them to sigh, roll their eyes, and place the book on a shelf or in a box someplace.  There it will remain until, perhaps, somewhere in their 40’s – give or take a decade – they remember it, go looking for it (perhaps a bit frantically), rediscover it, and maybe find it to be interesting after-all.  And I am pretty sure that doing this will be good for me if nothing else.

My point in bringing this up is that I was “drawing a blank” on what to post for the holiday’s this year. But then, for some reason – probably because I had been through my shop  retrieving a Christmas decoration from the attic over it – I realized I might have a pretty good seasonal story to share. So here we go.

Specifically, in pulling down the folding stairs to the attic over the shop, my eyes came to rest the Flexible Flyer you see in the photo at the top of the post. That was my Dad’s sled when he grew up on a farm near Bellefonte or more specifically, Waddle, in Central Pennsylvania. I spent a lot of time riding it in my youth.

The story I was reminded of happened before I was around, maybe even before I was a “twinkle in my Father’s eye” as they say. But the event I am about to relate may just have triggered the twinkle one snowy Christmas Eve, at least that is what I like to think.

Central Pennsylvania has a lot of rolling hills and the land that the farm was on was no exception, sitting in the Nittany Valley with gently rising hills on either side of it. Some of the hills were woodlands, but some had been cleared for crops and pastures over the years. The picture below will give you a sense of it.

These cleared areas made for great sled rides and my brother and I spent many hours on the Flexible Flyer racing downhill, across a pasture past the oak tree in the bottom left corner of the picture, making a hard left turn at the end of the run to slide to a stop before coming to a sharp 3-4 foot drop down to the road.

If you misjudged the turn, which we did on occasion, you ended up taking the plunge. But with all the layers of clothes we had on, bruises were minor if any and the danger was minimal given it was a country lane with very little traffic.

In any case, as far as I know, on the Christmas Eve I am referencing, Mom and Dad were engaged, and Mom – more of a a city girl than not – had already been to the farm once or twice but never when there was snow until this occasion. So, Dad thought it would be fun to introduce her to the joys of sled riding and talked her into making a trip down the biggest open pasture on the farm with the Flexible Flyer in the opening photo being their means of transport.

I can imagine this would have been a romantic sounding notion to my Mom. Perhaps, in her mind’s eye, she was thinking they would need to snuggle up together to make the trip; certainly my Dad was not thinking of sending her hurling down a hill on a sled for the first time ever all by herself.

This being the late 1940’s/early 1950’s, I would also imagine that in the normal course of events, proper, attractive, young, unmarried women were not supposed to spend much time snuggled up to a man, even if it was the man they were engaged to. In fact, I suspect they were not even supposed to be considering it.

Holding hands, or maybe even arm in arm might have been O.K. once you were engaged. But certainly not sitting front to back with arms and legs wrapped around each other to ride a sled or worse yet, lying front to back on top of each other. But at this point in the conversation, I suspect Mom had not thought in practical terms about how they would both fit on the sled.

Dad, on the other hand, might have.

But my guess is that Mom probably just thought that it would be all snuggly and romantic and would probably involve a hand-in hand walk to the top of the hill together. Plus, she had never really been sled riding.

So, she said yes, and in my mind’s eye, I see the two of them heading out towards the barn together to retrieve the sled, hand in hand as she had hoped, Dad in his work clothes and the red leather hat he always wore when home working with his Father and brother on the farm. And Mom in a taupe, knee length coat, a burgundy scarf covering her head, and black ankle high boots with fur rimming the top of them on her feet.

From there, they probably walked up the valley a bit along the line separating the woodland from the cleared land for a little over a third of a mile to get to that perfect sledding field, all of this in the gray mid-afternoon twilight of the near winter solstice with a quiet, gentle snow falling around them, the kind where the snow crystals are spectacularly huge, and intricate, and delicate, and make you feel as if the sky is snuggling you.

I imagine them quietly talking as Dad recounted growing up on the farm, something he was fond of doing because of his love for the place. He had spent many of the hours of his life prior to the war, plowing, and otherwise working the field they would have been walking along.

Or maybe he gently teased Mom about being a city girl who, until he brought her home to the farm with him for that first crucial visit, had always had the benefit of indoor plumbing, something that would not arrive at the farm for several more years. And now, here she was, all adapted and comfortable with occasional periods of rural life and about to go for her first real sled ride.

And I imagine the occasional quick kiss along the way, since young love is inspired to that sort of thing in settings like these.

In any case, eventually they would have arrived at the upper left corner of the field in the picture below.

That probably does not look like much of a hill, but the angle and the corn in the foreground make it a bit deceiving. If you look at it on a topographical map, the drop is in the range of 100 – 110 feet from the start of the run to the bottom of the valley in about 500 feet of horizontal distance.

The red dot on the map is about where Mom and Dad were standing when they were at the starting point of the sled run. The black outlined square next to the orange dot is the barn, where they retrieved the sled, and the black dot next to the blue dot is the farmhouse. The light blue line above the word “RAILROAD” is a little creek that marked the very bottom of the valley.

The creek itself was only 6-12 inches deep, even during the rainy season, but it was several feet wide and in some places, there was a 2-3 foot drop from the elevation of the field to its banks; not that different from the drop to the road if you miss-judged your turn at the end of the run in the field where my brother and I sledded in our youth. More on why that matters in a minute.

To give you a sense of the elevation change, when you are standing at the top of a typical flight of stairs and looking down, you are looking at an elevation change of about 12 inches vertically for every 18 inches of horizontal distance covered. In that context, imagine riding a sled down your basement stairs (I am sure there are kids how have tried it) (if there is a kid reading this DO NOT DO THAT).

Now envision riding down a slope about 1/3 as steep and you have a sense of what my Mom saw when they arrived at the starting point. That is still pretty steep, and hills always look steeper from the top, at least they do for me. I suspect the same might have been true for Mom.

So, I would not be surprised if, having arrived at the starting point, Mom might have expressed second thoughts about taking the ride. My Dad probably had anticipated this and had a plan. Truth is, even with a steep hill, with fresh snow on top of the stubble of a hay field, it takes several runs down the hill to sort of “break things in”, at least in my experience.

The first run will be spectacularly slow and short; you may even need push yourself along a bit at the end of it to feel a bit of satisfaction about the distance gained. The second run builds on the first by an order of magnitude or more for both speed and distance. And at some point, usually a couple of runs at the most after the first two, you “break the snow barrier” and find yourself flying down the hill at breakneck speed.

My guess is that when Mom expressed some second thoughts, my Dad offered to make a run or two on his own to show her how safe it was. These runs, of course, would under-state what would eventually happen if you persisted at things a bit. But after watching my Dad make one or two slow, relatively short runs down the hill, Mom agreed to giving it a try.

At this point, I suspect the practical considerations regarding proper conduct of an engaged but unmarried young woman needing to somehow fit on one sled with her man emerged. This was likely met with mixed emotion since it may have been my Dad’s plan all along and may also have been the subconscious reason the snuggly sled ride appealed to my Mom.

I don’t really know what happened at this point; it was never discussed. Perhaps they tried Mom in front with Dad behind her, his legs on either side of her and his arms around her grasping the rope that would steer the sled. And I suspect Mom may have found this to be quite satisfactory other than for the fact that she was staring point-blank down a hill that looked like a near vertical drop with nothing in front of her to protect her.

At that point, maybe they decided to try switching positions. But about the time Mom stepped astride the sled behind Dad, it probably occurred to her that perhaps this was not the most proper of positions for a young woman wearing a skirt to assume.

As it turned out, they settled on Dad lying on the sled, gripping the steering arm with his hands (which in my experience works really well) with Mom lying on top of him, arms wrapped around him and gripping the sides of the sled, probably for dear life.

At that point, Dad would have pushed off and they would have started down the path carved out by may Dad on during his demonstration runs. From having done it, I suspect that two or three demonstration runs would have gotten things pretty close to the point where you would “break the snow barrier”, but not quite.

So maybe their first run got half way down the hill with enough speed to make it pretty exciting, but with enough distance between where they slid to a stop and the bottom of the hill to make things seem very manageable and safe to my Mom. However, the course was now set for “breaking the snow barrier”.

What with getting to lie on top of her man with her arms wrapped around him listening to my Dad’s infectious laughter as they slid down the hill, Mom probably thought another run would be fun. Dad, of course agreed, so the climbed back up the hill, positioned themselves on the sled, perhaps after a quick, glowy-eyed kiss, and headed down the hill.

This time, they “broke the snow barrier”.

Your Father took me sled riding for the first time down a huge hill where it turned out that you had to jump a creek to finish the ride!

Generally speaking, that is how this event was related to my brother and I (or others when we managed to figure out a way to get Dad to start telling the story with Mom in the room).

Full disclosure, a lot of this is speculation on my part; the details never were divulged in the telling of the story. And were you to write down what was actually related during a telling of the tale and compare it to what I have written, it would be much shorter. But in my mind, and I guess in my heart, this could easily be an accurate appraisal of the details.

In any case, I suspect that right about the time they “broke the snow barrier” and started to accelerate instead of decelerate half way down the hill, Mom noticed the creek.

Remember the creek; the light blue line on the topographical map?

Dad, of course knew it was there.

Part of the fun of the ride was jumping it, which worked …

…most of the time.

But if it didn’t, you made the 2 or so foot drop to the banks of the creek and maybe into the creek. Not a big deal really if you are young and a farm boy. But probably not what you would like to subject your future bride too.

On the other hand, if you pulled it off, as you had countless times before, then you would be your future bride’s knight in shining armor.

At the time, Dad may not have realized he already was Mom’s knight in shining armor.

Or maybe he did but thought it would be good to reinforce that sort of thing. But either way, for Dad, jumping the creek was the culminating event in the over-all experience of farm-land sled riding.

For my Mom, it had the potential of a nightmare; what if they missed and ended up in the creek? It would could ruin her coat, and her hair, and she would be freezing, and it was not a short walk back to the farm house, which did not have central heating, just fireplaces.

Phil, please don’t do this!

Dad, realizing that perhaps he had pushed a bit too hard, but also realizing that there was a point where physics was governing all of this, decides to try to circumvent the creek jump by making a hard-left turn, dissipating speed by sliding sideways, just like my brother and I would do to avoid ending up in the road.

If it worked, it would look like the plan all along. But if it didn’t; well, not good.

In the end, the balance of forces almost, but not quite, worked out. In other words, Mom and Dad and the sled at a relatively slow speed, dropped the two or so feet to the banks of the creek and then started to roll towards the ice covered water.

All of this happened in fractions of a second and there was no thought involved, just instinct; Dad grabbed Mom and stopped their roll at the water’s edge with his coat just touching the ice and Mom safely on dry land.

There they sat for a second …

… or a minute …

… or an hour …

… or a year, or an eternity, wrapped around each other gazing into each other’s eyes, adrenalin pumping, anger and excitement pounding against each-other in their veins.

And then they kissed, and not just a peck on the cheek.

And somewhere in there, I think I might have become a twinkle in their eyes.

At that point, I suspect reason and proper conduct prevailed and they jumped up, surveyed the damage, realized it was minimal, and headed back to the farm-house.

My guess is that on the walk back, Dad apologized for not mentioning the creek jump as being a part of the over-all experience to my Mom.

And Mom, while acting appropriately upset about it, tells him that it was O.K. and that other than nearly ending up in the creek, it was quite exciting. This followed by a quick kiss that was not quite as quick as the ones on the way out.

So, there is a Christmas Eve story for you, enhanced, of course, by my imagination filling in the gaps between what I was told and what I saw in my parent’s eyes and heard in their voices when they told it.

May you all have a happy (and romantic) holiday season.

David Sellers
Senior Engineer – Facility Dynamics Engineering                                 Visit Our Commissioning Resources Website at http://www.av8rdas.com/

Electric League of the Pacific North West Training Opportunity

This is a quick post to let you know that I will be helping to support a two day technical class for the Electric League of the Pacific Northwest.   

The class will be a two day long technical class that will use the existing building commissioning process as a way to work with the technical skills that commissioning providers will use in virtually any commissioning process.  The class is designed to be interactive and provide some hands-on exposure to the various skills via exercises with SketchUp models and exercises in the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center mechanical spaces.

I have added the class to a calendar on the the Training Opportunities page of our Cx resources website and you can find additional information there.  Or you can use this link to go directly to the Electric League’s web page for details and a registration link.

                                                        

David Sellers
Senior Engineer – Facility Dynamics Engineering     Visit Our Commissioning Resources Website at http://www.av8rdas.com/