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At Stanford developed a unique system of heat recovery
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
At the private research university. Leland of Stanford, located in the state of California, work Nobel laureates, who almost every day make any discovery.
One of the best was the latest development of specialists - a system of heat recovery, which has already been put into operation and is used for heating and cooling buildings.
The developers used a unique system of heat recovery and, receiving a large percentage of solar energy, the university reduced greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of fuel used by almost 70%.
The campus occupies more than 32 km 2, on which there are more than a thousand buildings. Total amount of emissions into the atmosphere is more than 150 thousand tons per year.
The new system replaced the thermal power plant, which operated on natural gas and was put into operation in the late 1980s. The thermal power plant heated and cooled the buildings using an underground network of steam pipes. Joe Stagner, Stanford's chief executive for electricity management, explained that cooling is a process of collecting heat, rather than delivering cold, as many people mistakenly think. The steam circulates through the pipes and returns to the power plant in the form of hot water, as well as the cooled water, after heating the buildings, returns to the starting point. As a result, excess heat was simply released into the atmosphere at the power plant by means of a cooling tower, i.e. Was spent irrationally.
Over time, the campus increased, the existing heating and cooling system no longer coped with the load, and the university was forced to buy energy, which was not cheap.
Engineers of the university noticed that the turnover of chilled water and steam flows almost in parallel and then the developers came up with the idea of creating a system for obtaining heat back using renewable energy sources.
The new system is called SESI. It uses heat that previously evaporated into the atmosphere, the system moves hot water from the cooling pipes to a new cycle, so that heat is not wasted. At the university, steam pipes were replaced with hot water pipes, and the points of connection from steam to hot water were converted.
Now the town has significantly reduced the amount of harmful emissions into the atmosphere through the use of renewable energy sources.
To manage the SESI system, special software was created. According to the developers, the new heating and cooling system is 70% more efficient than the thermal power plant and can significantly reduce heat losses. Also, SESI was developed with a 25% power reserve, which can cover the costs of the expanding town until 2050. Since there is no more steam loss, the water saving that comes with the central boiler house with the introduction of the new system is 70%, in terms of the total water used in the campus, the savings are about 20%
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