Canary Wharf cooling project is award winner

UK: The success of a prestigious project to replace the cooling and heating system in one of London’s iconic buildings has been recognised in a number of UK awards.

Cool-Therm, the Bristol-based provider of cooling, heat pump and air flow solutions was presented with its latest award for Product Innovation of the Year in the Architects’ Journal Retrofit Awards 2016, earlier this month.

The project at 5 North Colonnade in London’s Canary Wharf, on behalf of a major financial organisation, involved the installation of an all-fresh air heating and cooling system. Designed and installed in a collaboration between WSP/PB London, Gratte Brothers and Cool-Therm, the system comprises high performance AHUs, with a combination of water-to-air heat pumps and dx heating and cooling.

The new system is said to have dramatically reduced building running costs and carbon emissions, while providing outstanding indoor comfort for occupants.

Following installation, energy costs have been reduced by some £255,027 a year, amounting to nearly £5000 per week. Savings will continue to accrue over the anticipated 10 to 15-year operational life of the plant, delivering total lifetime savings of between £2.55m and £3.8m.

The AJ accolade is the latest industry recognition for the project, which has also won the award for Building Services Project of the Year in this year’s H&V News Awards, as well as being shortlisted for the Sustainable Project of the Year in the forthcoming H&V Review Awards.

The key to its efficiency is the harnessing of energy from the condenser water system which serves the building predominantly for cooling.

The building was originally equipped with a hvac system based on six US-made Mammoth fresh air AHUs, providing dx cooling with electric heating. The system was described as inefficient and under-sized  given the increase in the building occupancy density building over time. It was also said to be proving expensive to maintain.

The brief was to replace the system to deliver substantial savings in energy running costs and carbon emissions, while increasing the supply air capacity by 25%. The plan had to be based on an all-fresh air system to maintain a high quality indoor environment.

Despite the increase in duty, the replacement solution had to occupy the same or smaller footprint as the original plant due to space restrictions on site.

The Team’s solution is based on six Clima Tech AHUs linked to six Geoclima water-to-air heat pumps. Each AHU has a capacity of 16.5 m³/sec, and each heat pump a heating capacity of 354kW and cooling capacity of 393kW.

This gives an enormous total fresh air volume for the installation of 99m³/sec, total heating capacity of 2.34MW and cooling capacity of 2.12MW.

The phased project had to be carried out over three separate, carefully managed stages as the existing ventilation system could not facilitate a total shutdown of fresh air systems.

To minimise energy usage in heating mode, heat from condensing water (normally discharged via the building’s cooling towers) is captured by the heat pumps for use in pre-heating air.

To ensure the purity of fresh air supplied to the building, a two-stage filtration process is used.

As a result of the successful completion of the project, Cool-Therm was invited to bid for and successful won the contract to replace the ageing chillers on the building.