College of Engineering Developing Solar Space and Water Heater with an Armenian Company

The Engineering Research Center (ERC) has initiated a project entitled “Development of a Solar and Natural-Gas Driven Hybrid Hot Water and Space Heating System.” The project is funded by Industrial Technologies Co. (ITC), an Armenia-based engineering and product-development company. ERC will develop an optimized design for the unit and provide product schematics and specifications. ITC will make use of AUA engineers’ R&D to prepare the fabrication drawings. The prototype is expected to be built jointly after completion of the design phase. Dr. Artak Hambarian, the project’s principal investigator (PI), explains, “These units are expected to reduce the dependency on natural-gas and tap into solar energy, a resource that is abundant in Armenia.” Three CoE students were competitively recruited to participate in this project.

From left to right: Seda Baghdasaryan, Hasmik Vasilyan, Razmik Martirosyan, and Dr. Artak Hambarian (PI). The students are all in their second year of the IESM Master’s program.