Greenpeace installs R290 heat pump
4th September 2024
UK: An R290 heat pump is now providing heating and DHW to the London office of leading environmental organisation Greenpeace.
Situated in a residential conservation area in Islington, the 1920s-built, four-storey building was acquired by Greenpeace to serve as its London office and operational base in 1990.
Two 60kW gas-fired boilers, which Greenpeace installed to replace a diesel-powered CHP system when they moved in, have now been replaced by a Palladium R290 heat pump, supported by two thermal stores.
Manufactured in Italy by Enerblue Srl, the heat pump was supplied by UK representative Pure Thermal and installed by Bingley-based contractor VWG Mechanical.
While a desire to move away from fossil fuels was a given, Greenpeace considered a large number of possible options before choosing the Palladium.
“Greenpeace is obviously a big brand in terms of its kind of recognition and the name, but actually we are not a very wealthy organisation. And this was an expensive project, so we had to be really sure about the investment that we were making,” said Greenpeace joint executive director Will McCallum.
The Palladium unit, measuring 3.8m long x 1.3m wide x 2.4m high, was craned onto the site in July and was commissioned in early August.
The Palladium heat pump has a rated heating capacity of 114kW. It operates with two circuits with two scroll compressors, optimised for R290, on each. By operating independently, the twin circuits are also key to the unit maintaining a high efficiency during defrost.
Employing microtube coils with large exchange surface, the R290 charge per circuit is just 4.8kg. SCOP is 3.58.
The range of Palladium heat pumps has been designed to allow units to be used in applications where noise must be minimised, so was seen as ideal for this residential installation. It features an acoustically insulated compressor compartment as standard and achieves a sound power level of 73dBA. In addition, the unit, which is installed on a raised area at the rear of the premises, is acoustically and visually sheltered from neighbouring residences by existing external buildings and boundary walls.
In the change from gas boilers to a heat pump, no changes were made to the fabric of the building or the existing heat distribution system.
