meeting time: Monday, Oct. 19
team present: Kevin Hawkins, Skyler Olsen
topics discussed:- The risk assessment document is due Friday, Oct. 23. The details of the document can be found on the
Senior Design website. I will be working on it throughout the week and will be in the Duke building at various times that he will make everyone aware of. If anyone would like to meet anywhere else at anytime let me know and I will be more than happy to accommodate.
- Some discussion about ideas including using polyurethane, paper and wood to build the insulating portion of the fridge. After some brief calculations, this set up should work nicely if we can mimic the steady state environment...which isn't too likely. I will continue to think about new ideas for cheap and effective insulation and welcome any thoughts, criticism, etc.
- There was further discussion about how the milk will be stored inside the refrigerator. We must assume that the milk can be poured directly into the refrigerator as well as being stored in containers and then placed into the refrigerator. The former will require some thought into making the inside of the fridge easily cleanable, safe to be in contact with milk and allow for efficient and sanitary bottling. This seems to be an interesting problem and again I welcome some ideas. The latter will be less problematic as the fridge can be "copied" from other designs.
- Kevin will be doing some research into cutting techniques for the polyurethane as well as finding some information about milk storage.
- I will be working on various parts of the project this week with the majority of my time being taken up with the red tape of the documents due Friday. Some elements I will be exploring include further analysis of refrigeration systems (insulation techniques, materials, compressors, control systems, etc), a breakdown of the circuit required to operate a variable speed compressor, energy usage and methods of storage to reduce energy usage.
- I would like to see some development in a control system (read microprocessor and program code) that can control a variable speed compressor using thermocouples as temperature sensing devices. I would really like to have a prototype built for next weeks conceptual design review.
Let me know if there is anything that I can do to help.