Category: david

Current and Former SBS Lab Members Win Awards at SimBuild 2024

Nathan Kurtz on

The Lab received a total of 6 prestigious awards at the SimBuild 2024 conference in Denver:

  • Prof. Zuo received IBPSA-USA Outstanding Researcher Award
  • Former Ph.D. student Yunyang Ye received IBPSA-USA Emerging Contributor Award
  • Current Postdoctoral Scholar Katy Hinkelman received SimBuild 2024 Best Reviewer Award
  • Current Ph.D. student Rosina Adhikari and former M.S. student David Milner received SimBuild Travel Scholarship
  • Best Poster Award was given to a paper led by former Ph.D. student Xu Han and his Ph.D. student Zhuorui Li together with former Ph.D. student Jing Wang and Prof. Zuo

We greatly appreciate all of the support from mentors and advisors as well as the support of colleagues and collaborators throughout the industry. This conference was a great experience for our current and former lab members to network and learn with others in the industry.

Release of New Sand Heating Systems Modelica Package

Nathan Kurtz on

We are excited to announce the release of open-source Modelica package for sand heating systems. The package contains models for particle-based silica-sand thermal energy storage (TES) in heating applications.

Silica sand is an abundant, low-cost, and efficient storage medium for solar power and electricity generation. Solid particle TES could be used to benefit building and district heating systems, particularly as building electrification and renewable energy penetration increases. To enable heating system design and evaluation with sand TES, the package contains base classes through complete systems with equipment, controls, and ready-to-use scripts for simulating and plotting.

This research was led by SBS Lab members Katy Hinkelman and David Milner. The details are documented in the conference paper “Open-Source Models for Sand-Based Thermal Storage in Heating Applications“, which was presented at the 15th International Modelica Conference. This research was done in collaboration with researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory where another conference paper was published demonstrating the usage of the package via case study for district energy systems.

To access the package and related papers please visit Modelica Sand Heating Package.

 

SBS Celebrates the Graduation of the Final Cohort of Graduate Students at CU Boulder

Nathan Kurtz on

The SBS lab celebrated the graduation of the final cohort of CU Boulder graduate students. Congratulations to the two Ph.D. students in Mechanical Engineering Cary Faulkner and Jake Castellini as well as our M.S. graduate in Architectural Engineering David Milner. It has been an honor and pleasure to work with all of these wonderful researchers over the past several years. It has been a joy to celebrate their achievements together and we wish them the best of luck in their future careers.

David Milner Successfully Passes His M.S. Thesis Defense

Nathan Kurtz on

Congratulations to David Milner on successfully passing his M.S. Thesis Defense. David’s thesis studied the novel application of sand-based thermal storage for buildings, utilizing Modelica models. Thanks to Dr. Zhiwen Ma and Dr. Kyri Baker for serving on David’s committee. It was exciting to see David working hard and making such progress on this research.