The Performance Characteristics of PEX Hot-Water Systems

Project Description:

The project impacts advancement of propagating energy and water efficient piping system by helping the industrial partner validate the superior performance of new technology—both quantitatively and qualitatively. In particular, the project is enabling College students and professors to perform a range of applied research activities to test, categorize, and benchmark the performance of the company systems against conventional piping materials and their associated installations. The industrial partner has particular interest in assessing energy efficiency, thermal comfort, water quality and usage efficiency, regulatory compliance, product life-time, ease of installation, and ease of maintenance of its systems. The project will accomplish this by using scale models, full-scale test systems, and computer simulations. The ultimate aim of the project is to help our industry to understand the superiority of PEX technology.

This project is divided into three phases with the following objectives:

Phase I: Actual Installation for Hot Water Delivery (HWD) System: HWD system designed and built specifically to investigate water delivery time, water volume waste, water-flow and zero-flow heat loss, as well as the overall energy efficiency of the system. The 30.48 m (100 ft) real-life test system was developed to imitate the layouts and sizes that would be found in a residential condominium installation using Uponor’s PEX pipes, commercially available fittings and outlets to ensure that the data obtained is as consistent with real-world practices as possible.

The results showed UA values for flow condition heat loss and estimates of cooldown times for zero-flow conditions. In addition, the activation of the re-circulation system reduced the usable hot water delivery time by approximately 84% and consequently reduced the wastewater volume by about 76 %. These results suggest that the test systems and methodology that have been created for this project phase is able to provide realistic and accurate results.

Phase II: Hydronic heating system: Installation for hydronic heating system with a renewable energy source zone control for a typical space where measurable such as actual energy use, occupant comfort, insulations, optical windows with different renewable energy source can be evaluated.

Phase III: Preparation, surface engineering and material optimisation

1. Preparation: Securing the technical requirements and necessities including developing design experiment methodologies, standards, and weather data for the entire project.

Experimental work: Developing small scale models and metallographic preparation for samples to evaluate PEX surfaces, insulations and walls composites prior to and after being introduced to the thermal and environmental conditions.

2. Numerical Simulation: Creating Finite element models, using Ansys™ to test the response of the surfaces to mechanical scratch, mechanical indentation, freeze- thaw cycle prior to and after being exposed to the thermal and environmental conditions.

The project is funded by NSERC and the industrial partner (Uponor Ltd.) contributing cash and in-kind annually to this project for three years. Uponor is the world’s largest manufacturer of PEX piping with 100 years of expertise in piping and home building. This project is one of only four ARD-2 grants in Algonquin College’s history

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