Mathematical design enables major energy savings

The EASY-E project, which ended earlier this year and had the Teknologisk Institut as the project manager, used mathematical models to improve energy efficiency, thereby reducing CO2 emissions in the industry.

After three and a half years of research and development, the EASY-E project, which was funded by EUDP - Det Energiteknologiske Udviklings- og Demonstrationsprogram , presented promising results. Through mathematical models, the project has opened up new possibilities within thermal topology optimization (TTO), which aims to optimize the design of components for heating and cooling.

The project showed that there are significant savings to be achieved if future energy consumption is also incorporated as a factor when designing thermal components. This means that with relatively small changes, the climate footprint of large machines can be significantly reduced.

Energy Savings of 20 Percent

Gram Equipment , Asetek , Bühler Group , 丹佛斯 , and Per Aarsleff A/S participated in the project together with DTU - Technical University of Denmark and Oqton , providing test components such as heat exchangers in industrial systems and CPU coolers.

Using the mathematical models, the companies received suggestions on how to shape and reposition the cooling or heating elements to optimize energy efficiency. For some participants, this resulted in an increased energy efficiency of 20 percent. However, even in cases where the savings might be smaller, it is still worth considering.

EASY-E focused on broad application in the industry, and in the bigger picture, it is a much greater gain for the climate to achieve a 5 percent improvement on 1,000,000 products rather than a 100 percent improvement on 100 products."

Inputting relevant data

An example could be a CPU cooler. The efficiency of the cooler depends on the ability to transport heat from the chip to the cooling medium – this could, for example, be with water. The more and faster the heat is moved, the better.

Relevant data and any design preferences are inputted so that the result aligns well with specific production requirements. The mathematical models will then shape the component to be as energy-efficient as possible. This often means that the component takes on a more organic appearance than what might be intuitively expected by a human.

Broad Integration in the Industry

Although the models have shown promising results, they still require fine-tuning and adaptation to specific company needs. Therefore, guidance from experts familiar with the system is crucial at the current stage.

The goal is to make the technology accessible so that it can be broadly integrated into the industry and also be used by engineers without expert knowledge.

In the long term, the aim is to develop software that can be accessed from a regular computer and can be learned by any engineer. That way, it is possible to make energy-efficient TTO available to a very broad audience. The path to achieving this requires further development. Therefore, Center for Industrial 3D printing - Danish Technological Institute will attempt to initiate a new project that continues where EASY-E left off.