| This thesis was done in collaboration between the EMAT Laboratory (Applied Electromagnetism and Telecommunications) and Air Tech Equipement LTD. In this thesis we study the controllability of ventilation motors variable speed consideration for house air equality applications. This kind of studies is growing in importance because of the rising price of energy and any reduction in home appliance energy consumption would then have a significant impact on a large scale. Also because of the rising cost of energy, most new houses are air tight. When a house is air tight, a problem of the air quality arises. For this reason, we find air exchangers in most new houses and even in some renewed ones. An air exchanger requires at least one motor for a fan and uses a microcontroller for control. But most of those fans are controlled with fixed speed drives to enable operating at full, medium or low speed. However, it is more convenient to run those fans at a larger range of speeds so that the highest speed will rarely be reached. The results are that both energy consumption and noise, produced by the fan, are reduced. Just the noise alone would be a selling point for that application. Most of the existing systems already include a microcontroller collecting the sensors data to provide control signals. That same microcontroller can be used to control a variable speed drive, thus reducing the implementation costs. Also, the existing air exchangers on the market have limited functionality when it comes to their control. One part of this research will study how to improve this functionality by implementing an innovative control algorithm.;Finally, home appliances are still in their infancy stage when it comes to the control of their variable speed drive. There is some work that has been done with other appliances, but for the environmental control variable speed drive which is still limited to almost only commercial buildings, though there is a lack of applications in residential buildings. This thesis covers this application in particular.;Key words: Ventilation system, Air equality, AC motors, DC motors, Microcontrollers, Variable speed control, Optimization, Environment, Sensors. |
