Research and Development Log
A selection of some interesting research and development protects we have undertaken over the past few years.
2014
Test Rig
- Design and build of test rig
Testing is the basis of development, and in order to test system properly you need a decent test rig.
In 2014 we decided it was time to design and install more advanced test facilities on our factory that were capable of investigation as well as simple product testing.
We had plans to see what can be done with the latest open-source electronics, to look into biomass boiler efficiencies, and to push the envelope on district heating design. Our sister company across the road, Specflue, runs the countries largest biomass and renewables RHI training centre, and as such had a large array of boilers to connect up as working system, both to heat the buildings and run the training courses on.
Their training centre design has been designed, built and extended around have the goal of having one of everything, rather than your typical heating system, with 5 permanent biomass heat sources, solar thermal, a heat pump, and a few temporary ones when testing new boilers. Also, radiators and underfloor heating as well as an assortment of buffer stores from the small ones to the big ones, to rectangular ones - all selected to provide installers with the best quality training we can. In summary, a perfect challenge for testing kit our systems on, alongside the factory rig, for training and demonstrating the states of the arts. Our end of the Specflue rig was designing the control philosophy, thermal tore sizing, and monitoring/control applications.
Our own factory test rig, was not so much aimed at having an array of permanent installations, but rather a solid but challenging plant room, a working heating system that could enable load testing, a single buffer that allowed us to vary its effective volumes, and a testing area that allowed just about any system to be easily connected up.
For plant room we went for a twin biomass pellet boiler system that would need to allow for a portable cabinet boiler house to plug in externally. The easiest approach would be gas LPG boilers, but that would not give us the test rig needed to advance understanding of biomass and the control systems for them. We also wanted to go for RHI, for educational than financial reasons - we wanted to be able to improve and teach exactly how best to setup and operate a small scale biomass plantroom on district heating.
The rig has been in use now for over 2 years, and is invaluable to all aspects of out research, development, and training. It is in our view a jewel in the industry, and one we are trying to use as a basis for setting up the UKs first approved installer courses for district heating - currently there are none and general installation quality in the industry is ghastly. We wish to do something about that, as it benefits both us as manufacturers and the end users who have to live with quality of installers work.
2015
Arduino and Linux embedded control systems
- Researching various open source electronics platforms
- Researching software language options Python/PHP/Linux
- Development of software code
- Implementation of various types of sensor
- Investigation into use of spectral analysis on captured images
Biomass efficiencies and monitoring
- Investigation of boiler efficiency
- Investigation as to correlations between sensor inputs and efficiency
- Test rig development
- Spectral analysis of hopper fuel levels
- Software design for monitoring
