Thermal Control Project

Nowadays, electrical energy is indispensable for all human activities, so there are large investments in means of obtaining energy to sustain such demand. One of the ways of obtaining electrical energy is through heating the water to transform it into steam to turn turbines and generate electricity. Water heating can be done through sessions nuclear power plants that generate thermal energy. But nuclear reactions need to be controlled because generate a lot of energy, for that the temperature of the nuclear reactor is controlled. The project aims to creation of a prototype of a system that controls the temperature of a nuclear reactor. The prototype constructed was composed by:

• Stepper motor used to mix the waters, so the temperature is homogenous
• Water heating resistance (actuator)
• Solid-state relay to control the resistance
• Thermometer (sensor)
• Arduino calculator
• Arduino shield designed to this project

The control system was an on-off control, because this project represents a non-linear system.The actuator is activated when the sensor detects a lower than desired temperature. It turns off when the desired point is reached. A demo is available here.