Course:VANT151/2020/Team5/Team5Main

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Welcome to Team 5 project - Energy Recovery Clothes Dryer with Protective Feature

We are Team 5. Welcome to Energy Recovery Clothes Dryer! Our research team consists of 11 people, Victor, Xuanzhe, George, Xinq, Xintao, Kayra, Waleed, Chengyu, Wenhan, Xueyi, Xiangyi, who included in 5 sub-teams, documentation, electronics, structural, mechanical, and UI design. Our objective is to find a new way to reuse heat and to improve the efficiency of the clothes dryer.

Project Overview

Problem Statement

Nowadays, clothes dryers use a lot of electricity, the average cost to dry clothes is around a dollar. The high cost of dryer working increased the financial burden of users and society and increased the harm to the environment and the wild animals. Therefore, engineers must build up optimized dryers that can recycle energy and reduce cost. In this project, our team is going to create an energy recovery clothes dryer. The main design concept will focus on energy efficiency and environmental friendliness. To achieve this, the controllability of the dryer will be important in this design project.

Project Function

1. An opening with a door to transfer clothes in and out.

2. The clothes dryer can evenly dry clothes with the rotation of drum drive.

3. An exhaust vent that can emit water from the dryer.

4. An operation panel that allows users to control the temperature of the dryer.

5. A working mechanism that can flexibly change the temperature of the dryer.

Project Objective

1. Controllable drying time.

2. Controllable drying temperature.

3. Energy recycling.

4. Easy to be controlled by users.

Project Constraints

1. The size cannot exceed 250 x 220 x 300 mm. The capacity should be at least 0.5 L.

2. The maximum allowable electrical power consumption is 12 V AC, 12 VA.

3. The dryer must have an alphanumeric LCD and navigation buttons for the user interface.

4. The dryer must have an automatic operating mode and a manual operating mode.

5. The dryer must be able to dry a cotton handkerchief within 1 hour.

Final Report can be accessed from here: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AhFElHirU3sWgjrBXUkb4QB_4tDr

User-Interface Design

Overview of the user-interface sub-system

Requirements

Functions

1. A start button that runs the dryer with default values of time, humidity, temperature.

2. Display the time, humidity, temperature values on the LED screen.

3. Users can change and reset the values with seven buttons.

4. Keep the door closed during the drying process.

5. Have a timing function.

7. Will automatically shut off after the drying finished.

Objectives

1. Designing a clean and simple user interface.

2. Showing a reasonable drying time.

3. Offering intuitive feadback for users.

Constraints

The size of the UI system should not be bigger than 100x150x60 (mm) (including the LCD display)
The power consumption of the entire system should not exceed 3 watts (when turned on).
The power consumption of the entire system should not exceed 0.5 watts (when turned off).
The maximum numbers of buttons are 10.

The Design

Hardware Layout

Program Flow Chart

The design has 8 buttons on the breadboard connected to 1 LED. For that design, 6 buttons are used to change the time, humidity, and temperature value, 1 button is for reset all three values back to the default setting. On the left side, a button is for start running the dryer, and the the present status of the dryer on the LED.

Operating Sequence and Program Flow Chart

The dryer has three main factors that decides the drying mode, time, humidity, and temperature, in the unit of minutes and %. If the user doesn't want to change the values, he can directly press the start button to run the dryer with default values, or he can use the six buttons in the middle to increase or decrease the values. A button on the right is used to reset all values back into the default status. With the proper time, humidity, and temperature value, the user can then start drying by pressing the start button.

Mechanical Design

The major deliverable of the mechanical sub-team is drum size and drive design. In addition to the basic components, a centrifugal turbine is designed to minimize the required energy for normal functioning of the dryer; A lint filter is designed to obstruct dust.

Functions

The clothes dryer allows heat and airflow to dry the clothes efficiently and evenly.

Objectives

Designing a drum drive and other major mechanical components that contributes to the function of the ENEREC dryer.

Constraints

Maximum size of dryer: 220 x 250 x 300 mm
Minimum volume of drum: 0.5 L (500 cm³)
The clothes dryer must dry the 0.5 L of clothes within 1 hour

The size of the drum is 0.92L.

The Design

Drum Size

The drum volume is approximately 0.92 L. The diagram below shows the basic design of the drum. The drum is designed to dry a small piece of clothing in a short time. It is also decided to rotate at a desired speed.

Drive System and Motor Support

The drum drive uses centripetal force to evenly dry clothing and speeds up the drying process. Therefore, a larger surface area (that is ) would optimize the amount of clothing in one load and time required to dry. We tried to calculate the radius (r) and the height (h) that would optimize the performance of the dryer concerning volume using calculus. However, this can not be done because the optimized r and h for a given volume is respectively approaching 0 and approaching infinity. Then we attempted to find the average ratio between r and h by measuring existing models. It is found that the average radius to height ratio is 3 to 7, thus our drum drive has a diameter of 100 mm and is 116.67 mm long.

Two motors are used in our design: one driving the drum, the other driving the centrifugal turbine. The motor driving the drum will be mounted to the base of the dryer, which provides primary rotational force to the drum drive through a belt system. The motor driving the turbine will be inserted into the body of the turbine. It provides additional rotational force to the drum.

The scale drawing of the compressor.

Special Feature: The Compressor

The Compressor is the content created by our group to make this dryer more commercially valuable. This introduction will briefly describe the latest design and working principle of the Compressor, the history of the creation of the Compressor.

The Compressor is designed to save the thermal energy carried away by the hot gas. The shape of the turbine is trapezoidal, the overall height is 50mm, and the width of the top blade is 23mm. The upper top surface is a circle with a radius of 10mm, excluding the blade length, and the lower bottom surface is a circle with a radius of 49mm. The experimental team designed to place a motor in the center of the Compressor to provide the initial power for the device. After the rotation speed of the device reaches a specific value, the motor will no longer accelerate it, but the hot air will continue to drive it to rotate, to achieve a balanced state of work. The Compressor compresses the hot air and then enters the drum. The high-density hot air allows the clothes to be dried faster. At the same time, the top layer inside the drum will not accumulate moist waste air, but all the exhaust gas can be discharged from the drum. The pipes below drain smoothly. The device achieves two functions of "compressed air" and "diversion."

The design of the Compressor has undergone a total of three design schemes. The functions of the devices in these three schemes are different: speed increase, diversion and turbocharging.

In the first scheme, the function of the device is to accelerate the rotation speed of the drum. The turbine is fixed at the rear of the drum. The outer layer is directly connected to the duct of the air outlet hole, thereby ensuring that almost all exhaust gas can pass through the turbine. These gases can drive the drum to rotate faster, thus achieving the conversion of thermal energy to kinetic energy. However, because the air intake and temperature of this dryer model are too low, it is theoretically impossible to achieve the speed of the device. Therefore, it was abandoned.

The second set of programs chose the function of "controlling the gas flow" under the failure of the first program. The scheme was inspired by old jets and gliders. The main idea is to drive the blades to rotate when the hot air passes through the device. In the end, like a propeller of a glider, it will reach a balanced working state without interference from external forces. In this way, the flow of hot air is controlled so that the drum does not accumulate wet exhaust gas on the upper inner layer, but is smoothly discharged from the air outlet at the bottom of the drum. However, this plan does not take into account that the "propeller" balance state requires an external force to create the initial conditions. In other words, the speed of the gas in the dryer cannot reach the conditions of the brake blades.

The scale drawing of the lint filter (45 mm x 40 mm).

After installing the power source in the third scheme, it realizes two functions of "compressed hot air" and "diversion," which is the latest version of the design.

Lint Filter

The lint filter is designed to obstruct fluff. When the dryer is working, the fluff mixed water can overflow from the clothes into the interior of the dryer, it is not only difficult to clean, but it may cause the failure of the dryer—even fire, in future use. The length and width of the filter are respectively 45 mm and 40 mm, and the width and thickness of the frame are 2.5 mm. Small holes are designed on both sides of the filter's handle so that the water mixed with fluff can smoothly flow into the filter. Considering the size of the drum and the entire dryer, we hope to achieve the maximum filtering effect with the smallest possible volume. Therefore, a filter is added at the bottom of the filter perpendicular to the original plane. To ensure that the filter can stop all fluff.

Heat Exchanger

Image of the complete prototype constructed with solidworks.

The heat exchanger is designed to endure a maximum temperature of 200 degrees Celsius. It uses six PPE tubes whose melting point is 268 degrees Celsius for heat exchanging. The tubes are curved around the drum to increase contacting area and to save space.

Video 1: Rotating Drum

Structural Design

The goal of the structural sub-team is to open holes for the LCD screen and LED lights, make a door and latch, and to make special features such as, adding a tray table, standing, music player etc.

Requirements

Functions

The project of designing an energy recovery clothes dryer requires specific structure with special features. The requirements for this project have been studied before starting the process of designing. Some of requirements were extracted from the need statement provided by the project advisor and others were necessary to functionate the project. In this part, the requirements for the structure of the clothes dryer are explained including functions, objectives and constraints.

Objectives

Some features were considered as optional as the design does not have to have them. One of those features is the wheels to make the dryer portable. The wheels might be really helpful for the user but designing them and connecting them to the structure of the dryer has some difficulties, so the team considered them an objective.

Constraints

The structure of the clothes design has to follow some constraints regarding size, material, and wanted features. For the size, the clothes dryer has to be in the scope of 250x250 cm2. Those dimensions were determined by the whole team so there will be enough space for every unit. More information about the material can be found in the Units sub-team section. For the features, a tray table is necessary for the clothes dryer as it makes using the dryer easier.

The Design

Door

The design of the door for the clothes dryer machine has to contain some apparatus to keep clothes inside the machine while its functioning. These apparatus are; components of the latch, the cylindrical object on the inner surface of the door. Moreover, apart from these, opening way of the door is also affected the design of the door as much as the designs of the apparatuses. For the first apparatus, the latch is an object which keeps the door tightly closed. For this project latch was designed in two components which are the hook of the latch and the place where that hook is attached. For the hook, it is shaped like the letter "v" but wider, and that hook is attached to another object which is shaped like a cylinder but in the middle of the object, a big hole was opened to place the hook.

The purpose of the cylindrical object is to keep the clothes inside the machine by closing every opening on the door. In other words, it prevents the clothes from coming out by closing the gaps, just like stopper. This object is designed in a cylindrical shape due to the shape of the drum and an angle was given to the cylinder to be attached even more.

Finally, the opening direction of the door is designed to be opened to the right side of the machine because it would be for the door to keep opened until the user puts their clothes. Moreover, if the door was designed to be opened upwards, there was a possibility of breaking the hinges due to the wight of the door

Control Panel

A control panel is a special board which helps to user to use a machine more freely, quickly and comfortably by placing an extra space for user-interface components. For this project, designing a EneREC clothes dryer machine, twelve buttons, a LCD screen and two LED lights were given to control the clothes dryer machine. After having discussions, it was decided to have a suitable panel for the given components. For the design of the panel, there were two possible designs for the panel in the first stages of the design process but, then one of the designs were chosen to be the final design for being the better design among the other. In the following paragraphs further information will be given about the chosen and the alternative design.

The alternative design was not chosen due to these reasons which listed below:

Being not handy
The location of the panel
Shape of the panel

Firstly, the first design, the alternative, was not handy for the user to control the machine because the alternative panel was not thick enough to be noticed by the user. In other words, the panel was not as practical as the chosen design. Secondly, the location of the panel (front part of the clothes dryer) would have made harder to use the user-interface components like buttons and LCD screen, if the panel was not relocated to the back of the clothes dryer. Finally, the shape of the panel was so simple and was not handy for the user. As it mentioned in the first reason of not being picked for the final design, thickness of the panel was 10 millimetres which was very thin for the sizes of the machine.

The final design was chosen due to these reasons:

Shape of the newer panel
Being more user friendly
The location

The first reason for choosing this design was the shape of the newer design because, the newer design makes easier to see and use the user-interface components by making an angle between the top surface machine's panel with the bottom surface of the panel. Second reason was for being more user friendly by giving more space for the buttons and LCD screen. In other words, the distance between the components extended to use it easily. This reason is also related to the third reason which is the location of the panel. In this final design, the panel is located on the far side of the clothes dryer and with that more empty space was provided on the front side of the clothes dryer to place objects such as, wet clothes, a tray to collect the clothes after finishing drying or even phone and wallet.

Water Collection Tray

The purpose of the water collection tray is to collect water that flows out from machines like refrigerator, laundry machines and clothes dryers. In this EneREC clothes dryer machine, water collection tray is used to collect the water coming out from the pipes and cables which are connected to the drum. For this reason, water collection tray was designed to put under the cables and to do that there were two possible designs in beginning.

Electrical/Electronic Design

The main object of EE sub-team is to make a circuit that can run the heater well. Some codes are made to ensure that the whole system can be controlled well.

Requirements

Functions

1.Connecting each parts well.

2. Able to run the motor, fan and heater.

3. Have a stable power supply.

4. Have enough code that can control the circuit and UI parts.

5. Have safety precautions.

Objectives

1.Running the system successfully.

2. Making sure is can be controlled well.

Constraints

A photograph of the whole circuit

1.The circuit should be as simple as possible.

The Design

Power Supply

Getting power from a 24V, 2,5A Power jack.

Fan Circuit

Fan circuit is at bottom left of the circuit, connected to the power supply by a bridge rectifier, 47k resistor and capacitor help to adjast the flow.

Drum Motor Circuit

Motor circuit is nearby the fan circuit, which is in the middle of whole circuit.

Heater Circuit

A simple heater which is connected to the circuit.

Temperature and Humidity Sensor

The sensor is directly connected to the ARDUINO for getting the data and code to run.

Live Chat

We are on duty during capstone hours according to this roster:

Names	Day & Time
Kayra & Waleed	Day 1, 11:15 am - 1:15 pm
Xuanzhe & Xintao	Day 1, 1:15 pm - 3:15 pm
Xinqiao & Victor	Day 1, 3:15 pm - 5:15 pm
George & Victor	Day 1, 5:15 pm - 6:15 pm
Chengyu & Wenhan	Day 1, 6:15 pm - 7:45 pm
Xuanzhe & George	Day 2, 8 am - 10 am
Xinqiao & Xintao	Day 2, 10 am - 12 am
Chengyu & Wenhan	Day 2, 12 pm - 13:15 pm

Chat with us on Collaborate Ultra!

About Us

Sub-teams:

Documentation
Ophelia Ren Xiangyi Ren Documentation Group Member My name is Xiangyi Ren and I am a student from UBC. As a Documentation Sub-Team member, I mainly work on the format and executive summary.	Xueyi Wang Xueyi Wang Documentation Group Member My full name is Xueyi Wang and my preferred name is Lulu. I am a member of Documentation Sub-Team. I mainly work on the group website and the presentation slides.
Electrical/Electronic
Victor Tao Team Leader Electrical/Electronic Group Member I am Victor Tao, the leader of Team 5. I provided the main design ideas and the main functions of our clothes dryer. Also, I am a member of Electrical Sub-Team. I am willing to answer your questions related to technical issues.	Xuanzhe Cao Xuanzhe Cao Electrical/Electronic Group Member My name is Xuanzhe Cao. I come from China. In my group, I joined the building of the circuit and code. This is the second time I used the Arduino, it is an important experience for me.
Mechanical
George Cao George Cao Mechanical Group Member My name is George, and I am from China. In my mechanical sub-group, I joined in making mechanical components, which include drum drive, lint filter and power adaptor.	Xintao Kang Xintao Kang Mechanical Group Member My name is Xintao, and I am from China. In my mechanical sub-group, I joined in making the cad and the animation of drive system.
Xinqiao Wan Xinqiao Wan Mechanical Group Member I'm Xinqiao (Xinq), a member of the mechanical sub-team. I contributed to the discussion regarding drum size, the design process for the drive system, and the lint filter.
Structural
Kayra Oztoprak Kayra Oztoprak Structural Group Member My name is Kayra Oztoprak. and I am a student from UBC. As a member of the structural sub-team, my job is to make the structure and enclosure of the dryer, and the opening and holes.	Waleed Ai-Shukri Waleed Ai-Shukri Structural Group Member My name is Waleed Ai-Shukri. and I am a student from UBC. As a member of the structural sub-team, my job is to make the door and latch of the dryer. Also, I joined to do the features, including Tray table and Tires.
User-Interface
Chengyu Yang Chengyu Yang User-Interface Group Member My name is Chengyu Yang, and I am student from Vantage program of UBC. As a member in user-interface sub-team, my primary work is to do the arduino coding, and test it with hardwares.	Wenhan Song Wenhan Song User-Interface Group Member My name is Wenhan, and I am from China. In my user-interface sub-group, my job is to do the breadboard Buttons and LCD.