Four HKU ME students won in the Smart Cooling Challenge at HACK ASIA 2019, Singapore

Four of ME undergraduate students, Chan Ka Ho, Chan Ka Man, Cheng Yiu Him and Yum Ka Lok won Hack Asia 2019 in the Smart Cooling Challenge (one of the six themes) in Singapore. 100s teams participated in this years' Hack Asia. The Smart Cooling theme was sponsored by Hong Kong Land. Six finalist teams from the region was chosen as finalists based on their initial proposals, and then invited and sponsored to participate in the two-day Hack Asia in Singapore last week. During the hackathon, teams further develop their concept and be mentored by industry experts. The Smart Cooling Challenge this year aims to increase the temperature of return chilled water in a high-rise commercial building; the chilled water is supplied from a central district cooling plant. The building (owner) has been paying a high fee to the central district cooling plant, but the temperature of the return water is still too low. After going through over 1 billion realistic data that were provided by the Hong Kong Land, the students discovered the building is actually over-designed such that the chilled water flow rate is already at its minimum. The team decided to challenge this assumption and suggested to replace the existing pump with two smaller sized pump connected in series. (Same head, lowered flow rate). With big data analytics, the students proposed the operation time and control settings for the best operation of the new pumps, solving the problem with an estimated payback period of one month. https://www.agorize.com/en/challenges/hack-asia