Client: Markham District Energy
Year: 2022 to Present
Project Highlights
- >30,000 tons of GHG Savings Annually
- 18.75 MWt Heating and 3,600 tons Cooling will be the worlds largest wastewater energy transfer project
World’s Largest Sewer Heat Recovery Project
Markham District Energy (MDE) and FVB Energy (FVB) have worked together every step of the way in developing what will be the world’s largest wastewater energy transfer (WET) recovery project in the world which will supply low carbon heating and cooling energy to over 13M sq. ft. of connected customers in the Markham Centre area.
Utilizing a custom array of low and high stage heat pumps, the project will have the ability to simultaneously export up to 18.75 MWt of 95°C hot water and 3,600 tons of 4°C chilled to the district energy system (DES) without the need to burn any fossil fuels making this a truly one-of-a-kind project. By avoiding the consumption of natural gas, this project will avoid over 30,000 tons of greenhouse gas annually which is a ~75% reduction of MDE’s total emissions. In the middle of winter when the heating demand outweighs the cooling demand, the WET system will extract energy from the adjacent trunk sewer and elevate it to higher temperatures through the use to heat pumps which run off low carbon electricity from the Ontario power grid. In the summer when the cooling demand dominates, the system will reject heat into the trunk sewer avoiding the need to operate cooling towers or dry coolers. This energy transfer occurs in a closed loop system from Noventa Energy Partners which filters and extracts the energy while minimizing the handling of any solids. This ensures that the raw wastewater is allowed to continue down the trunk sewer in the same state as it otherwise was… just a few degrees warmer or cooler depending on operating mode.
Since the adjacent trunk sewer is always flowing between 1,200-2,000 L/s of 15-25°C wastewater, this energy source is both year-round and endless which eliminates the need to seasonally balance the energy flows. This, in combination with the higher efficiencies, it one of the primary benefits of a WET system versus a geo-exchange system.
Due to the significant amount of greenhouse gas savings, MDE and FVB were successful in obtaining both Federal funding for this project though the Low Carbon Economy Challenge to help offset the high capital costs of this project, and low interest financing through the Canadian Infrastructure Bank (CIB) and CIBC.
FVB Energy is the prime consultant for the entirety of this project completing the funding application, the financial and energy modeling, detailed design, procurement assistance, and will be the principal site field inspector and Engineer of Record for this project. Detailed design of this project was completed in June 2024 with construction breaking ground in July 2024, and system operation by 2026. FVB would also like to acknowledge the wastewater/civil sub-consultant, RVA, the architect, Baldassarra, the HV/MV electrical sub-consultant, Quasar, the construction manager, GHD, the WET equipment partner, Noventa, and the trunk sewer owner, York Region, for their contributions to this exciting project.
More Information
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Keywords
Sewer Heat Recovery, Heat Pumps, Decarbonization, MDE