ASET Fall 2017 - 13

Inlet Temperature Disturbances
in a Shell-Tube Heat Exchanger
PROJECT TEAM
Logan Schalk. I chose NAIT because of its state-of-the-art
labs, small class sizes, great instructors, and short commute from my home in Spruce Grove. More specifically, I
was drawn to the Instrumentation Engineering Technology
Program when family friends assured me it was one of the
institution's most challenging courses. Some of my favourite classes were PLC Programming and Process Control.
I absolutely loved the program from the start and, being
a glutton for punishment, I immediate enrolled in NAIT's
Bachelor of Technology in Technology Management degree option. Outside of school, I am an avid outdoorsman
who enjoys hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, and skiing.
I'm fortunate that my summer job, surveying pipelines,
marries my love of technology and my passion for nature-
I mean, they pay me to spend four months outdoors in the
mountains. Don't tell them, but I'd ALMOST do it for free...
almost...school's expensive.

PROJECT SUMMARY
My capstone project was unique in that it was a pilot project
conducted in Instrumentation Engineering Technology. Only
10 students in my cohort were selected to participate in this
initiative. We were chosen based on our respective academic standings in our Introduction to Process Control course.
Through an organization called i@home, I collaborated
with students from the Middle Eastern Technical University
in Ankara, Turkey. I performed various step changes on
my shell-tube heat exchanger in the NAIT labs and would
share my findings with my Turkish counterparts. Likewise,
they made various step changes to their shell-tube heat exchanger and shared their findings with me. This collaboration provided the basis for my capstone project: Designing
a feedforward with feedback-trim model for a shell-tube
heat exchanger, specifically for the unit housed in the NAIT
Instrumentation labs.
This capstone project was unique in that I was able to
learn about the shell-tube heat exchanger and make physical step changes while benefiting from a valuable cultural
learning experience. Through the collaborative process, I
gained an understanding of their culture and language
while sharing some Canadian culture with my colleagues
in the Middle East.
I am extremely content with this experience and am
pleased with how my final capstone project turned out.
The collaboration led to an opportunity to travel to Turkey
in May 2017, meet the students I worked with, and see their
shell-tube heat exchanger in person

TECHNOLOGY ALBERTA | FALL 2017 | 13

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ASET Fall 2017