News: University Challenge: How low on energy use can you go?

News: University Challenge: How low on energy use can you go?

When Aston University required ventilation for a major refurbishment programme they opted to use Eco-Airvent’s UK designed and patented heat recovery technology.
Classmaster VHR are UK manufactured heat recovery units (HRU) with industry leading energy efficiency, long life (100,000 hour) motors and low maintenance filters.The challenge was to select a sufficiently quiet HRU that could be installed in the existing classroom areas without the need to add false ceilings to reduce noise breakout from the HRU.Classmaster HRU’s ultra low noise levels provided the solution. Powder coated to match existing ceiling colour the low profile HRU’s were installed at high level.

With a total maximum installed specific fan power (SFP) of ≤ 0.66 W/l/s the ventilation system uses 60 per cent less energy than the current maximum SFP allowable of 1.6W/l/s (Government directive 2013). Eco-Airvents patented HRU design achieves a high thermal efficiency even if HRU is running at a low airflow to conserve energy. Eco-Airvents technology allows HRU to run at 50 per cent air volume while maintaining 89 per cent thermal efficiency by maintaining turbulent flow within the heat exchanger (this is not possible with conventional technologies as heat exchanger loses its thermal efficiency as it transfers into laminar flow at low airflow rates)

To further reduce energy costs, ventilation control, including automatic summer bypass and night cooling, was provided via BMS linked to Eco-Pro3© controller automatically adjusting ventilation rate as requiredvia sensors for temperature, CO² or time limited manual override.

With the third phase of installations now complete, first phase completed 2015, Aston University can reliably expect many years of trouble free energy efficient ventilation.

Source: Energyzine