An integrated solar-powered heat pump and modular thermal storage system to offset natural gas usage for heating applications
Partners: Solcan, Neotherm, London Hydro, City of London, Enbridge
The purpose of this project is to develop and demonstrate an integrated, solar-powered heat pump and modular thermal storage system that provides zero-carbon thermal energy; and to conduct economic and policy analyses to demonstrate its viable deployment at residential and industrial scales. This interdisciplinary project will complement technical advancement along with economic, social and policy analysis. In Canada, as per the 2018 estimate, residential and commercial water/space heating amounts to nearly 75% of total energy usage; over 60% of which comes from fossil-fuels. In industry, significant energy that is consumed for space/process heating and drying is subsequently discarded as waste heat that could be recovered for other uses. A modular system that stores and utilizes solar energy and waste heat for heating applications in residential, industrial and agriculture sectors will substantially reduce fossil fuel usage and thus, Canada’s carbon footprint. The project team will also consider the potential of measures including: incentives to ensure affordability; strategies to help low-income households reduce their energy bills and carbon footprint simultaneously; and introducing the system to remote communities that currently depend on expensive and highly-polluting diesel-powered generators.
Research Biographies
Anthony G. Straatman
Dr. Straatman is currently a Professor and Chair of the Mechanical & Materials Engineering department at Western University. He completed his B.E.Sc. and M.E.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering, from Western University in 1991 and 1992, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1995, where he specialized in Computational Fluid Dynamics and Turbulence Modelling. After working in the software industry for Advanced Scientific Computing (now ANSYS), he took up a professorship at Western University in 1997 and moved through the ranks to full professor by 2010. In his time at Western, he has served as Associate Chair Undergraduate and Associate Chair Graduate in the MME Department at Western, and now leads the department as Chair since 2016. Dr. Straatman has received multiple departmental, faculty and university teaching awards including the Edward G. Pleva Award, Western’s highest award for excellence in University Teaching. He has served on the board of directors of the CFD Society of Canada for 6 years, and as president from 2012-2014. He is also a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME) since 2016. Dr. Straatman supervises a staff of graduate researchers and works mainly in the areas of heat and mass transfer in porous media and energy transport in compressible and incompressible flows.
Kamran Siddiqui
Professor
Ph.D. (University of Toronto
B. Eng. (N.E.D. University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan)
Awards and scholarships
- Fellow, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
- Fellow, Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME)
- Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Leaders Opportunity Fund Award
- Petro-Canada Young Innovators Award
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Post-Doctoral Fellowship
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Post Graduate Scholarship
- Ontario Graduate Scholarship
- University of Toronto Fellowship
- Professional affiliations
- Professional member, Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO)
- Member ASME, CSME
- Chair, Thermo-fluids Technical Committee (CSME)
- Past Chair, Fluid Mechanics Technical Committee, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
- Past Chair, Students Affairs Committee (CSME)
- Past Technical Editor, CSME Bulletin
Joshua Pearce
Joshua M. Pearce is the John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation at the Thompson Centre for Engineering Leadership & Innovation. He holds appointments at Ivey Business School and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Western University in Canada. He runs the Free Appropriate Sustainability Technology research group. His research concentrates on the use of open source appropriate technology (OSAT) to find collaborative solutions to problems in sustainability and to reduce poverty. His research spans areas of engineering of solar photovoltaic technology, open hardware, and distributed recycling and additive manufacturing (DRAM) using RepRap 3-D printing, but also includes policy and economics. His research is regularly covered by the international and national press. According to Elsevier’s citation metrics last year he was in the top 0.06% most cited scientists globally and is continually ranked in the top 0.1% for his accessible research on Academia.edu. He is the editor-in-chief of HardwareX, the first journal dedicated to open source scientific hardware and the author of the Open-Source Lab:How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs, Create, Share, and Save Money Using Open-Source Projects, and To Catch the Sun, an open source book of inspiring stories of communities coming together to harness their own solar energy, and how you can do it too!
Carol Hunsberger
Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Environment, Western University
I am a human geographer interested in the political ecology of energy systems, especially biofuels and pipelines. On one level this means studying the outcomes of energy projects for livelihoods and ecologies across scales. On another level it means considering how discourses attached to climate change, economic priorities, and competing interpretations of development and the ‘public interest’ influence patterns of governance, investment, promotion and resistance for energy projects. I am especially interested in how people with different positions on controversial issues interpret justice and fairness, and how the diverse values and priorities that they raise are reflected in decision-making processes.
More broadly I am interested in land use and the governance of environmental change. I have a persistent side interest in the politics of knowledge and how environmental issues are communicated. At different times this has expressed itself through work on scenario analysis, experiential education, global environmental assessment reports and community radio. Previously I have worked in Kenya though my current research focus is on energy projects in Canada.
