Evaporative Cooling for a company wishing to go Carbon Neutral

LM Wind Power are an international designer and manufacturer of wind turbine blades, helping to power a more sustainable world with renewable energy.

Following the merger of the UK based Blade Dynamics with the Danish LM Wind Power, the CEO pledged that the company would be carbon neutral by the end of 2018.

The Challenge

Post the merger, the manufacturing materials for the wind turbine blades changed, meaning that there were more chemicals involved in the manufacturing process. Whilst the team doing the manufacturing itself have protection against these chemical gases, there was a requirement to provide fresher air for the office team working nearby.

In addition to this, the offices were very hot in Summer and cold in Winter, so there was a requirement for cooling and heating.  Any solution needed to not only be effective, but also as carbon neutral as possible, so that the company was able to meet their pledge to be carbon neutral.

LM Wind Power had previously tried other options to cool their offices in Summer including small air conditioning units, but they were ineffective in the space and the energy use was far too high. Plus, they did not provide the ‘fresh air’ required for the office team.

The Solution

Design

We proposed that an EcoCooling evaporative cooling unit should be to be mounted on the roof and that it should be ducted into a heat recovery unit positioned on the roof adjacent to the cooling unit.

In the Summer this means that fresh cool air is ducted into the offices via acoustic lined flexible ducting and 4-way diffuser grilles. There are total of 16 grilles to serve all the office space.

At the same time, the old stale air is extracted from the offices and ducted back through the heat recovery unit to allow the heat to be recovered from it in Winter. The stale air is then discharged to atmosphere.

Installation

The installation took place around the people working on-site with little site disruption, and the system is now up and working properly with the team at LM Wind Power being very happy with the end result.

The Result

The combination of the evaporative cooling and heat recovery units means that working together with the existing heating system, the offices are able to be kept at a steady 21°C all year, whilst using little energy/carbon.

Employees are now able to work in fresh clean air which is being pumped through the building all year, and LM Wind Power has reached their commitment to be a carbon neutral company.

“ As a renewable energy company, we were determined to find a solution to our cooling and heating needs which was as close to carbon neutral as possible. Vent-Tech’s proposal for evaporative cooling incorporating a heat recovery unit, means that we are able to achieve a constant comfortable temperature within our offices, plus the fresh air being pumped in from outside means the environment is generally much more pleasant to work in. We are delighted with the end result and are happy to recommend Vent-Tech to companies requiring energy efficient, fresh air cooling”

Andrew Edge, Project Manager Materials and Processes, LM Wind Power