At our most recent Coffee Break webinar, we caught up with Vishal Sookhai of AQC Industries to discuss BlueDuct, their energy-saving, maintenance-free underground duct system.

You don’t want to miss these bimonthly sessions with HVAC experts sharing their latest innovations. Ask your SVL sales engineer for an invite to our future webinars.

There are many kinds of underground duct systems, ones made from fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) or PVC-coated duct. Why would an architect or engineer specify BlueDuct?

• The insulation is built in. The material won’t break down over time and will last the life of the building. Building owners can expect a consistent insulation value with no degradation over time. The thick integrated foam material in BlueDuct provides excellent thermal resistance. To protect themselves and their clients, engineers can specify that their system should be leak-tested, composed of one product all the way to the finished floor, with a thermal rating certified to the standards of NSF P374.
• It’s leak testable. Similar to underground plumbing, BlueDuct is designed to be easily tested in the field for leaks. Be sure to use AQC’s guide specifications to ensure your underground duct system is installed correctly.
• It’s a complete system. From an engineering standpoint, you don’t want to mix systems. BlueDuct supplies all the necessary components, from the main trunk line to the finished floor, designed to seal together completely. With FRP duct, often only the duct mains are provided (no runouts, boots, or diffusers), and it’s not sealed, leaving contractors to field-fabricate “something” to complete the system of dissimilar materials.
• Minimal lead time and fast installation. When you need a complete duct system installed immediately, BlueDuct is in stock and ready to ship to your job site.

What are some typical applications for BlueDuct?

BlueDuct is applicable to many new or retrofit constructions. It may be specified for several reasons, including its energy efficiency, IAQ standards, ease of ordering and installation, design aesthetics, or acoustics, based on the customer’s demands for the project and the space.

However, some common threads in BlueDuct installations include:

• Net-zero designs: Architects and engineers are now designing buildings around products that help them achieve a net-zero or otherwise sustainable design. BlueDuct meets all code standards for underground ductwork and helps qualify for LEED® and other green building credits.
• Houses of worship: BlueDuct frees up space for tall, vaulted ceilings and severely dampens noise from HVAC systems, so the occupied space remains quiet.
• Pools and natatoriums: This is a perfect system for supplying air to pool areas and tying it to the evacuation system to exhaust the chloramines from the pool surface.
• Historic buildings and retrofits: BlueDuct is not just for new construction. Historic buildings may not have room for ceiling ductwork, or doing so would destroy the integrity or historical value of the building. Often, the best (or only) choice is to put new ductwork underground. AQC recently supplied BlueDuct to a project in the Minnesota State Capitol building, which was not designed for ductwork when built over 120 years ago.
• Glass walls and large windows: BlueDuct is used frequently in the design of every new store for one of the US’s largest computer manufacturers. Their design has diffusers positioned to keep their signature bank of glass windows below the dew point. This ensures that no condensation forms on the glass and makes the store look clean, sleek, and inviting.
• Automotive dealerships and maintenance facilities: Many dealerships use floor-to-ceiling glass, which is best to supply air from the floor. In addition, BlueDuct works well in the maintenance bays for underground vehicle exhaust systems.
• Auditoriums: Sound is a serious concern in many BlueDuct applications, including auditoriums, theaters, and museums. BlueDuct conditions a space while making sure the hum of that air movement is not heard. It uses the earth as a damper, and the pre-insulated material in BlueDuct dampens the sound even further.

We recently sat down with Johan Martensson, the president and founder of Transom Corporation, to discuss heat pumps in our latest Coffee Break webinar. These bi-monthly presentations offer the most up-to-date information in the HVAC industry — ask your SVL sales engineer for an invite.

Older Heat Pump Technology

When it comes to typical air-source heat pumps, there’s a wide range of ambient temperatures in which they can operate (roughly -30 °F to 120 °F). But as the temperature drops, functionality suffers.

Recall that as the ambient temperature drops, the gas density in the loop decreases. But a compressor is a fixed-volume machine, and the reduction in gas density compels a decrease in capacity. This accounts for heat pumps’ historic poor performance in cold temperatures.

Several functions are often difficult to achieve with typical heat pumps. They must produce high temperatures for domestic hot water or new building comfort heating, and even higher temperatures to replace a gas boiler.

Transom’s Game-Changing Hatch Air Source Heat Pump

Transom researched refrigerants, compressor types, models, and manufacturers to innovate a compressor arrangement for a low-ambient, high-temperature heat pump.

The result is the Hatch Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP). Using conventional 410A refrigerant, Hatch will generate 140 °F water at -20 °F ambient temperature. It is equipped with a single- or double-wall heat exchanger and a built-in pump. It only requires front and side access (so it can be placed against a wall).

Hatch’s built-in economizer circuit means that refrigerant will be much cooler when it hits the evaporator (roughly 60–70 °F of subcooling), so it will grab much more heat out of the ambient air before it hits the compressor. This means greater capacity for less work.

Perfect for Retrofit Projects

Since Hatch heat pumps are modular, they can be added at different construction stages and pair easily with gas or electric backups. There’s a great opportunity, especially in cold climates, to install Hatch heat pumps upstream of gas boilers to reduce the load the gas backup needs to handle.

If capital is an issue, you can add more units later to increase capacity. It’s all about finding the right operational balance for your building, and modular systems allow you to adjust later as needed.

Blended Heat Pump Systems

For a balanced heating and cooling load, you can start with a dual heating and cooling water source heat pump (WSHP), and then downstream, use a Hatch ASHP (reversing heating/cooling) to take the heat from the chilled water line and create hot water.

In winter, when you need more heat than is available on the water side, the ASHP stages on as required, taking the heat out of the air and generating the high temp lead-in for the system.

In summer, when you have a mostly cooling load, the WSHP will take heat from the chilled water line and dump it into the hot water. The ASHP will switch to cooling mode, put additional cooling into the chilled water loop, and reject the heat into the air.

In This Coffee Break We Learn How to Tap Into a Massive Energy Source Flowing Right Under Our Feet

What is the value of wastewater heat?

The US Dept of Energy estimates that Americans discard 350 billion kWh of heat energy annually. That’s equal to the output of nearly 88 Hoover Dams sent down the drain by dishwashers, washing machines, and hot showers.

Wastewater maintains the same temperature year-round, with minimal changes throughout the seasons. The average person uses 30 gallons of hot water per day at 120 °F. Commercial and industrial wastewater temperatures can reach 140 °F or higher. An untapped flow of energy is continuously leaving our buildings for the sewer.

What kinds of solutions capture this energy?

SHARC Energy currently offers heat reclamation systems in two setups:

The Piranha is a self-contained heat pump designed for direct expansion heat exchange to recover thermal energy for domestic hot water. Wastewater is pumped from a holding tank into the unit containing a braised plate heat exchanger.

The potable and black water remain separate throughout, and the heat is transferred to the domestic hot water supply. With a COP of 3.5 or higher, the Piranha outperforms an electric water heater (COP 1).

A variation, Piranha HC, has a second connection for the building’s cooling loop. It features the same heat output as the Piranha with an added cooling capacity. By extracting energy from the cooling loop, it can achieve a COP of 7 or higher.

Their namesake SHARC system is larger and intended for a campus of buildings or a municipal sewer line. SHARC is a passive wastewater separator and filter that accesses thermal energy by temporarily removing solids from wastewater.

The filtered wastewater passes through a heat exchanger, which is connected to heat pumps for domestic hot water, heating and cooling, and even geo-loop conditioning and offset. The resource it provides is exponential, capturing megawatts of energy for low kilowatts of energy input.

Where can we apply these technologies?

The Piranha applies to any space with hot water needs, including hospitals, microbreweries, hospitality, commercial laundry, 50- to 350-unit apartment buildings, student housing, senior living, or community housing.

SHARC requires a minimum flow rate of 100 gallons per minute, so it’s best suited to operations like commercial food production, large breweries, dairies and cheesemaking, and 350-plus unit apartments and condos.

SHARC also has excellent potential in so-called “energy districts.” For example, in 2022, New York State passed the Utility Thermal Energy and Jobs Act that allows utilities to develop, operate, and maintain thermal energy networks. Several other municipalities may follow suit.

These energy districts could, for example, power an entire town using a mix of geothermal arrays, sewer energy, and SHARC technology. It would create an ambient energy loop through a large part of the city and allow heat pumps in buildings on that loop to pull and push energy for heating, cooling, and domestic hot water.

What other benefits does this tech bring to a building?

SHARC is one method of high-efficiency electrification, a way to hedge against future carbon taxes and gain immediate rebates from energy utilities.

Reducing or removing cooling towers can free up your building’s rooftop space for green space or solar capacity. This technology moves equipment to a mechanical room for quieter operation, ease of service, and extended lifespan out of the elements.

Hydronic heat also takes up less space than traditional air ducts, increasing the amount of usable space in a building design. Current and future building codes may also mandate some degree of electrification.

SHARC systems can help offset a property’s thermal load while increasing the building’s net asset value and operating income.

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RBI Introduces New Encore Firetube Boiler: A Coffee Break Recap

We asked Ken Eggleston of Mestek Boiler Group to shed some light on condensing boilers during our latest Coffee Break webinar. These bimonthly sessions offer the latest information on new HVAC technologies — be sure to ask your SVL sales engineer for an invite to our upcoming webinars.

Eggleston introduced the brand-new RBI Encore Firetube boiler, which debuts in February 2023. Read on to learn how the Encore is the perfect boiler for residential and light commercial applications.

RBI Introduces the Encore Firetube boiler

The Encore represents the completion of RBI’s firetube boiler sizes. The company offers its Flexcore boiler at a range of 850–6 million MBh. Now, the Encore provides a new lower end to that range (349–850 MBh), perfect for residential and light commercial applications.

More details on the RBI Encore:

• Available in 349, 400, 500, 600, 725, and 850 MBh models
• AHRI 98% thermal efficiency
• Full modulation, up to 10:1 turndown (though the 349 MBh model offers 7:1 turndown, as it is more of a down-fired product)
• Equipped with a 316L stainless steel heat exchanger
• Dual fuel options: natural gas, propane, or both if needed.
• HeatNet controller, 7-inch touchscreen. Made in-house by RBI and easy to service
• Works with CPVC, PVC, and polypropylene venting, as well as stainless steel venting. The standard adaptor is CPVC- and PVC-ready, while a stainless steel adapter is available.
• Works with variable primary (VPF) and primary/secondary piping arrangements.
• Maximum 60 °F delta T

 

“The Encore is the missing piece in the RBI puzzle,” says Eggleston. “Buildings are getting tighter, and Btu is going down. We now have a full range to fit any building, which is exciting for RBI.”

Encore can also act as a complementary technology in the decarbonization and electrification of buildings. In the upper Midwest, we have heating-dominant HVAC needs, and it is good practice to balance out a geothermal well field with a bit more heating capacity to balance the loads from winter to summer.

“Water-source heat pumps are a perfect match for an RBI Encore condensing boiler because we’re running low temps,” says Ken. “So, you’ll get the maximum efficiency out of that product.”

The Data Center Industry Is Changing. How Will That Affect Energy Consumption?

We asked Jim Magallanes to update our webinar viewers on the state of data storage operations and the innovative technologies guiding the future of this energy-hungry industry. His presentation was the latest of our 50-minute Coffee Break webinars — ask your SVL sales engineer for an invite to future sessions.

The State of Data Storage

The landscape of the data center industry is changing. There has been consolidation on one end of the spectrum with hyper-scale data centers — think of the cloud or other server centers like those at Google, Meta, Amazon, or Microsoft. These data centers keep growing larger and, fortunately, more efficient in their operations.

On the other end, there has been an explosion of small “data centers” that support normal business operations in the commercial, consumer, or industrial markets. This decentralized strategy of small data centers has been trending for a while and will continue to expand. Experts project that 75% of enterprise-generated data will be created or processed outside the centralized data center or cloud by 2025. That’s a ton of small data centers to support that network.

Energy Challenges in Micro “Data Centers”

Unfortunately, it is well documented that small data centers have poor cooling efficiencies and reliability. The main challenge with small data centers is that they are difficult to cool and come in all shapes and sizes, with demanding site characteristics unique to each building.

We use the term “data center” lightly here. In many cases, these server arrays are stashed in converted closets or mixed-use rooms, and there have not been server-specific cooling options for racks in these types of setups.

As a result, existing minisplit air conditioning systems usually become responsible for cooling the equipment. These systems inefficiently cool down the entire room for the sake of the server, which leads to reliability issues since they often run 24/7/365.

Consider that, in the aggregate, the energy consumption footprint of all small data centers in the country is just as large as that of massive data storage operations. Since cooling can account for up to 50% of energy costs in these arrangements, small data center cooling must evolve.

A Server-Specific Solution

EdgeCool Rackmount brings data center cooling efficiencies directly to the rack level. Its patented powerful design cools a 4 kW sensible heat load per rack while operating on standard 115 V power. Its split system design requires no additional floor space and works with most new or existing server racks, transforming them into portable, energy-saving server rooms.

EdgeCool’s efficiency comes down to how it cools the rack and not the entire room. By delivering cold air directly in front of the IT equipment and capturing the warmest air at the back of the rack, an EdgeCool rack provides little opportunity for the cold and warm air to mix (a prime culprit that hurts cooling efficiency).

This technology brings many of the best cooling practices found in large efficient data centers down to the small data center level. And it can cool multiple racks in larger centers as well. The efficiency is significant compared to minisplit arrangements — depending on your electricity rate and capacity, it could save thousands of dollars a year.

Furthermore, installation is straightforward and adaptable, with the evaporator unit located at the bottom of the server rack and several different options for the condenser unit, including the top portion of the server rack, on top of it, or remotely nearby. Not having to go through the building’s exterior walls or roofs like a traditional minisplit air conditioner, the installation time and costs can be cut by more than half.

EdgeCool is an excellent primary, redundant, or backup cooling solution for all sized data centers. Efficient cooling will save you money, while its reliability will lower your stress levels, knowing your data center will be properly cooled year-round.