ACREX 2011

Some things that caught my fancy at ACREX 2011.

The entry.


Too many exhibitors..


A Green Chilling Machine by International Coils Ltd., (chills water that is supplied to a building, used to cool the building air using Air Handling Units.)



Ducts for carrying cold air, made of fabric. They have excellent noise reduction properties, put little weight on the building skeleton, and can be removed and washed.

A manufacturer has introducted an internal skeleton for fabric ducts, so that they won't collapse if suction pressure, pressure that can cause implosion, is applied. Skelecore™ by Ductsox


Fabric duct interfaced with a fan. They have been used for industrial applications too.


---BEGIN NET ZERO---

The "Net Zero" house, aims to consume only as much energy it produces. In the following demonstration, energy is produced using Solar Cells you see on the roof. It has the provision to store energy that is in excess of its requirements.


Schematics of the Net Zero demo house..a small garden in the central courtyard provides cool air to the rooms through evaporative cooling; as well as diffused natural light.


The well insulated walls and roof and special frames, glass, reduce the heat gain by the house in summers, which reduces the cooling necessary.


Orientation too is important for reducing heat gain.


More schematics of Net Zero demo.


Photo of the central courtyard of the Net Zero demo. The greenery provides evaporative cooling. And diffuses light into the rooms.


More photos of the central courtyard of the Net Zero demo.



Bathroom of the Net Zero demo, tends to rely on natural lighting, during the day.


Art outside the Net Zero house demo, made entirely out of waste materials.


Garden surrounding the "Net Zero" house demo. Solar powered garden lamps.



---END NET ZERO----

Wireless Data Monitoring system, interfaces between devices and human controllers. What a relief it would be, to get rid of all those wires...




An Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) control device from Continental Engineers..it has a Carbon dioxide sensor attached to an exhaust fan mounted on a volume control damper.

When the Carbon dioxide level in the air conditioned space increases beyond a point, the sensor switches on the Exhaust fan.

Discontinuity

Firstly, the "Dichotomy Paradox" as highlighted by Aristotle.

The dichotomy paradox “That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.” —Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b10

Now, let us define a system.

System = Anything that moves or vibrates.

Now let us come to DISCONTINUITY.

Let us assume that SYSTEMS flow in a smooth, continuous manner, assuming every possible numeric state while transiting from one state to another.

Now let's look at the following:

Notation: ≈N means "Approximately number N"

Assume that the continuous system moves from ≈1 to ≈2.

To move from ≈1 to ≈2, it has to pass through 1.5

To move from ≈1 to ≈1.5, it has to pass through 1.25

To move from ≈1 to ≈1.25, it has to pass through 1.125

To move from ≈1 to ≈1.125 it has to pass through 1.0625.

AD INFINITUM.

Statement A:

"The SYSTEM passes through infinite physical states as it changes configuration."

Observation:

For passing through an infinite number of physical configurations, a system would take infinite time. You cannot have a system that can undergo infinite changes in state in finite time.

i.e., the above mentioned system cannot move at all.

The system can only move if it JUMPS and if it jumps it misses certain points. And that means it is NOT CONTINUOUS.

Moving further......

There cannot be any fixed pattern as far as the length of the jump is concerned.

The system can make only random jumps while changing configuration.

The system might jump from ≈1 to ≈1.2 to ≈1.4 to ≈1.9 to ≈2.

There is no law that it has to move in an increasing manner either.

It could jump from ≈1 to ≈1.4 to ≈1.9 to ≈1.3 and then wham ≈2.1.

It cannot cover all the numeric states between ≈1 and ≈2.

Nor can we ever predict how many jumps it will take before it reaches ≈2.

The following text is from "CHAOS: Making a New Science" by James Gleick, page 92-93.

The Noah Effect means discontinuity: when a quantity changes, it can change arbitrarily fast. Economists traditionally imagined that prices changed smoothly - rapidly or slowly, as the case may be, but smoothly in the sense that they pass through all the intervening levels on their way from one point to another. That image of motion was borrowed from physics, like much of the mathematics applied to economics. But it was wrong. Prices can change in instantaneous jumps, as swiftly as a piece of news can flash across a teletype wire and a thousand brokers can change their minds. A stock market strategy was doomed to fail, Mandelbrot argued, if it assumed that a stock would have to sell for $50 at some point on its way down from $60 to $10.

Further reading:

1. "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

2."Differentiating the Discontinuous" by Mark Buchanan, Nature Physics 7, (2011)

.

The Pressure Regulating Valve

Very easy to understand video on how a Pressure Regulating Valve works.