Chattanooga Engineers Club

NEXT MEETING___________________________

Monday, Apr. 6, 2009 - Noon - DOUBLETREE HOTEL (407 Chestnut St., Chattanooga, TN 37402)

"Geothermal Systems used in new Hamilton County Schools to reduce energy demands" – Imagine using the earth’s energy to help heat and cool your home or building. Think of the earth as a giant solar battery that absorbs nearly half of the sun’s energy. The ground has a relatively constant temperature throughout the year and provides a warm heat source in the winter and a cool heat sink in summer. A Geothermal HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) system provides a mechanism for transferring heat in the winter and cool in the summer from the ground to your house or building.

Matt Williams, Professional Engineer and President, Campbell & Associates, will review the design criteria and reasons why the new Hamilton County Schools’ HVAC systems will exchange energy with the earth by multiple wells drilled 300 feet on school property. Each individual well will provide about 2 tons of capacity. Certain homes and buildings in our area currently use geothermal HVAC systems.

Matt will describe the basic types of geothermal systems: conventional, hybrid, and open. He will discuss why geothermal systems are much more efficient than traditional HVAC systems.

FUTURE MEETINGS________________________

Monday, Apr. 13 - Noon - "Capstone Design"

Introductions will be by Dr. Kazemersky, Professor of Engineering at UTC. UTC students will present overviews of their Capstone Design Projects: (1) Design of an Intermodal Transportation Center, (2) Design and Fabrication of an Experiment on Inductive Charging of Electric Vehicles, (3) Conversion of a Saturn Vue to run on Hydrogen. (4) Design of a Hydrogen Fueling Station and (5) Design of the Running Moc's 2009 Mini Baja Vehicle.

Meeting Place: DOUBLETREE HOTEL

Monday, Apr. 20 - Noon – “New Technology that adsorbs heavy metal contaminates from our water and air” – David Vernetti will review methods of removing heavy metal contamination in our water and air. In some cases, the contamination has existed for a long time but most of us are unaware of the problem. Steward Advanced Materials, in Chattanooga, manufactures chemical additives which help remediate and treat water.

Speaker: David Vernetti, General Manager, Steward Advanced Materials

Meeting Place: DOUBLETREE HOTEL

Monday, Apr. 27 - Noon – Jim Frierson, great-grandson of John Kruesi, will present the Kruesi Legacy and an inside story of Thomas Edison's laboratory and Edison’s early days of invention at Menlo Park. John Kruesi was Edison’s head machinist through his Newark and Menlo Park periods. Kruesi translated Edison’s numerous rough sketches into working devices. Mr. Kruesi was a key player in Edison’s success as an inventor.

Frierson will lead the club members through the exciting days of Thomas Edison’s inventive life and discuss details of Edison’s inventions.

Speaker: Jim Frierson, ATTI

Meeting Place: DOUBLETREE HOTEL

PREVIOUS MEETING_______________________

Scott McKenzie and Charlie Adams, March Adams & Associates Inc. led a tour of the Tennessee Aquarium’s Ocean Journey Building. Twenty-eight members and guests of the Club toured the basement and viewed the cooling, heating, pumping, filtering, and mixing equipment. They also toured the third and fourth floors of the building, which includes the butterfly exhibit, where hundreds of butterflies flutter about and alight on the plants and trees in an indoor rainforest. The members and guests also enjoyed the stingray exhibit with a tropical beach and one-hundred feet of "shoreline" where the members could touch stingrays and bamboo sharks. Many thanks to Scott and Charlie for the tour and the excellent design of the life support systems for the aquatic wildlife.

ITEMS OF INTEREST_______________________

The Chattanooga Engineer's Club is relocating its meeting place to the DOUBLETREE HOTEL, CHATTANOOGA (407 Chestnut St., Chattanooga, TN 37402). The first meeting at the DOUBLETREE will be on Monday, April 6th. Free parking is available in the gated parking lot on the south side of the Hotel. The gate will be open from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. There is additional free parking east of the Hotel on Chestnut Street in the paved parking pit.

Looking for details on a local society meeting? Links to local engineering societies are available to you at: http://www.chattanoogaengineersclub.org/engineer.

Science Fair 2009 Sweepstakes Winners:

Senior Division:

1^st Place – Julia Shi from Tullahoma High School, Chemistry – Molecular Imprinting in the Creation of Sensors

2^nd Place – Jesse Wenren from Tullahoma High School, Computer Science – A Realistic Graphics Tool for Visualizing Physics Based Computational Data

3^rd Place – Rocky Schaeper from Sale Creek High School, Engineering-Electrical & Mechanical – Could a Parafoil Recovery System Save Lives in a Disabled Aircraft?

Junior Division:

1^st Place – Michael Labbe from OLPH High School, Energy & Transportation – Skating with Science

2^nd Place – Steven Dorris from OLPH High School, Animal Sciences – Which Habitat is Better? Natural or Synthetic?

3^rd Place – Colton Robinson from Boyd Buchanan High School, Energy & Transportation –Invisible Energy

QUESTIONS and SUGGESTIONS______________

If you have any questions, items of interest to the Chattanooga Engineers Club, or suggestions for 2009 programs, please contact Joe Robbins by e-mail at jrobbins@robbinsbohr.com or by phone at 423-756-4430. You can find membership application forms, references to future programs, historical data, and other info at: http://www.ChattanoogaEngineersClub.org. To receive future meeting announcements by email, join the Chattanooga Technology Organization mailing list at: http://www.ChattanoogaEngineersClub.org/email