Hong Kong Sports and Recreation Club
Background
The “Disciplined Services Sports and Recreation Club” is a sports and recreational centre located in Hong Kong and comprises two blocks of 6 storeys with total gross floor area of 17,400 sqm. The Club is run by “Kai Shing Management Services Limited”, but the final property owner is the Hong Kong Government: in fact, a tender was held and the entire project was supervised by the “Government Electrical and Mechanical Services Department”.
Purposes
The project concerned the replacement of the existing units with two new chillers providing both cooling and heat recovery. The chillers had to be installed on the roof, near one of the outdoor tennis courts; for this reason, the units had to be equipped with a noise reduction system. Moreover, since the new units had to match the previous chillers site position, connections had to be designed according to both existing water pipes layout and plinth support.
Project
For the “Disciplined Services Sports and Recreation Club” Geoclima developed two Turbomiser air cooled chillers with 900 kW of cooling capacity each and 50% heat recovery. The chillers provide cooling to the 6th floor, where the restaurant is located, and to all areas that require environmental comfort.
Thanks to the heat recovery system, the heat produced by the chillers is recovered to warm up sanitary water used in the swimming pool area. This leads to a remarkable reduction of energy consumption, with significant benefits in both economic and environmental terms.
The chillers are installed on the roof of the sports center, near one of the outdoor tennis courts. For this reason the units are equipped with sound insulation boxes for the compressors, in order to reduce noise emissions and improve acoustic comfort.
Moreover, connections had to be designed with particular attention to the existing piping layout developed by engineering consultants in Hong Kong. It is a very special piping system as it includes a thermal insulation solution: pipes connected to the chillers are put in other tubes that are filled up with thermal insulation foam. It is an innovative solution that makes it possible to improve plant efficiency by maintaining the temperature of the chilled water flowing through the system.
Results
The project developed by Geoclima meets the specific requirements of the “Disciplined Services Sports and Recreation Club” and, with the heat recovery system, is able to reduce the energy consumption of the building for both heating and cooling, with impressive economic benefits.
At present, two heating units are installed in front of the Geoclima chillers: in the future, we expect to replace them with new Turbomiser units with heat pumps to further improve energy savings.
