The PrincipleIn order to better understand how our units work, it is important to note that nearly all sites operate within a negative building air balance. Fundamentally, this means that the building is inviting outside ambient air in either through the building envelope or any mechanical means such as exhaust fans. How can we tell? By opening an outside door, is there a breeze into the building? Or is there a breeze while standing in an open doorway between your office space and a warehouse? The stronger the breeze, the greater the negative air balance within the building. These are some indications that during the winter heating season, the outside cold air is being “asked” to infiltrate the building causing the heating system of your facility to work much harder and consume more energy to warm that new cold permeating air.
The AMSEnergy Waste Heat Recovery system works with
that principle. Outside ambient air is drawn in; heated up with your current unwanted warm/hot liquid stream that may currently be targeted for a cooling tower, chiller or any other heat dissipating method. At first blush, this may seem counter intuitive. However, by taking outside air, warming it with waste heat the facility has already paid for and is seeking to rid itself of, now we are forcing into the facility a warmer positive pressure that the current heating system will not have to work so hard to overcome.
The overall goal is to inject the facility with warmer air than what is currently trying to permeate the building. The plant winter heat load can be substantially lowered which results in a significant cost savings. The second benefit to the heated air being forced back into the building and also the most overlooked advantage is the raising of the buildings air balance due to the additional CFM, thus aiding in the lowering of the rate of cold winter air infiltration. Third, these efforts will also reduce the current work load on the process cooling system due to the extraction of the BTU’s from the incoming process fluid.
All of these measures will add up in saving your site considerable energy dollars.