Client: Dalhousie University
Year: 2016 – 2018
Project Highlights
- Conversion of 21 Buildings and 2,300 trench meters of New Hot Water Distribution Piping
- No Disruption to Campus Operation or Critical Graduate Research Relying on District Heating
- 20% Reduction in Campus Heating Demand and 35% Reduction in Campus Energy
Campus Wide Steam-to-Hot Water Conversion in Less than 2 Years
Dalhousie’s (DAL) Truro Campus is located in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia and focusses on Agriculture and Aquaculture. This campus also includes a working farm, critical fisheries graduate research, nearly 1,000 acres of fields, gardens, greenhouses and a proud history on industry leading education and research since 1905.
Prior to FVB Energy’s involvement, the campuses 22 buildings were supplied heating and domestic hot water energy from a centralized biomass heating plant via an aging steam/ condensate system. In addition to space heating and potable hot water, the central steam system supplied mission critical energy to the Aquacultural facilities and was instrumental for maintaining and orchestrating critical graduate research for the fisheries programs. Any loss to the tank temperatures would result in years of lost research, thus, no outage would be permitted for a system switchover. This challenge was accepted by FVB and DAL and was deemed a fundamental project success criteria when evaluating all options to convert the campus from steam to hot water. Ultimately, FVB designed a 2-phase campus conversion that was implemented over a 2-year span, and resulted in zero disruption to the campus operation and had no impact critical research. This involved the installation of over 2,300 trench meters of new pre-insulated, EN253, hot water piping, 16 new hot water energy transfer stations (ETSs), and building level controls upgrades and optimizations to limit bypass flow and improve overall efficiency. FVB was also able to repurpose over 280 meter of steam pipes in tunnels to help reduce project capital, and repurpose an existing asset.
In addition to addressing some critical areas of facilities renewal, this project was able to significantly reduce the operating costs by taking advantage of medium temperature hot water that was a biproduct of the newly installed biomass powered ORC turbine that was producing low carbon electricity for the local grid (Learn More). A majority of the operational savings were a result of reducing the distribution losses by over 35% and from eliminating all unnecessary bypass flow form the building mechanical systems.
FVB Scope of Work:
- FVB completed the feasibility study, business case analysis, detailed design and provided on site construction support and commissioning support for the steam to hot water conversion of 21 building (~700,000 ft²), which included 16 Energy Transfer Stations.
- > 2,300 linear meters (1.6 miles) of buried EN253 hot water piping distribution was installed which included a remotely monitored leak detection system.
- The ETS control system was updated and included energy meters and two-way control valves.
- Converted localized steam humidifiers and sterilization equipment with electrical units in critical laboratories, veterinary and aquatic facilities.
- Repurposed chilled water coils as dual purpose CHW/HW coils on changeover for a cost saving measure.
- Repurposed ~280m (920 ft) of steam tunnel piping for a hot water application as a major cost saving measure to the project and steam unit heaters to a hot water application. Repurposed existing steam infrastructure including a steam reboiler and steam piping for humification in critical facilities.
More Information
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Keywords
Campus, Steam-to-Hot Water Conversion, DPS, ETS