“It became increasingly difficult to supply certain parts of the campus,” he said. “Even though we thought we had enough capacity, some buildings just weren’t receiving adequate chilled water.”

Pressures were varied widely throughout the campus. In the summer, delivered water temperatures started at 45 degrees F in the morning and reached 58 degrees F by afternoon. There wasn’t a lot of cooling going on and the problem was increasing. There was also concern about the efficiency of the system and the fact that much of the chiller equipment was aging and increasingly unreliable.

Given the size of the campus — over 350 acres — and the heavy air-conditioning requirement in Tucson, it was essential that a solution be found. In 1994, the university retained the Tucson firm of GLHN Architects & Engineers to evaluate the situation and make recommendations to solve it.

EXAMINING THE PIPES, CORDINATING EFFORTS

Henry Johnstone, associate/department manager for the firm, said GLHN initially determined that, as the chilled-water system had expanded, not enough attention had been given to the piping network. In some cases, major parts of the campus were supplied by single, 12-in. radial chilled-water lines. There was a major choke point for chilled water in the center of the campus.

One of GLHN’s earliest recommendations was to add large diameter chilled-water pipe at strategic locations and create a true grid. This would allow looped feed to all of the major areas and promote system flexibility. It would also allow the system to operate efficiently at much lower pressures than the 50 psi currently being seen in many locations.

Secondly, said Johnstone, GLHN identified the need to create a chilled-water dispatch system to coordinate operations at the three plants. In the past, the plant operators would receive complaints about inadequate chilled water in certain areas, so they would keep increasing pumping rates. But, because of piping shortcomings, this often didn’t have the desired effect.

“In some cases,” said Johnstone, “we had plants operating all of their chilled-water pumps at maximum output, but fighting each other.”

This improvement would allow central monitoring of conditions at each of the plants and at delivery points throughout the campus.

A Trane Tracer Summit?building management system was installed, using the campus Ethernet?system as the communications link, so minimal additional wiring was required. As the system distribution improvements were put into place beginning in 1995, Gordon Bush was named coordinator for system operations. Wilson indicates that a lot of the credit for improved system operations should go to Bush.

“He’s been patient but persistent in getting these plants to run at optimum levels,” said Wilson. “As we’ve gone along, we’ve learned that coordinating pumping operations is very important.”

IN THE LOOP WITH MORE CHILLERS

Another recommendation of GLHN was to go from a primary-secondary chilled-water system to a primary-only loop. Johnstone noted that this reduces pumping costs and allows delivery of lower temperature chilled water to use points.

“Lower temperatures mean less pumping volume and more efficient cooling,” he said. “It makes this new chilled-water grid even more effective. With the elimination of the secondary loop, the design delta T of the chilled-water plant went from 44/55 degrees F to 40/60 degrees F. The benefits are obvious.”

The final improvement recommended to the university was the staged replacement of many of the chillers and constant-speed chilled-water pumps with new, more efficient machines and variable-speed pumps. The older chillers were mostly open-drive, ranging in age from 15 to 30 years. The decision was made to standardize on Trane CenTraVac?direct-drive hermetic chillers.

“We chose these after serious consideration,” said Wilson. “We felt that their low internal pressure drops and their ability to deliver chilled water at 40 degrees F fit well with our overall scheme.”

The duplex chillers are particularly attractive to the university because of their extremely low internal pressure drops and their ability to deliver chilled-water efficiently at temperatures of 40 degrees F or even lower, said Wilson.

“With their high turndown levels, they also give us a lot of flexibility in the winter when chilled-water demands drop,” he said.

The three chilled-water plants now include 19 chillers. The university installed six Trane 2,000-ton duplex CenTraVac chillers and five other CenTraVac Model CVHF chillers totaling 5,400 tons of capacity. Another 2,500-ton duplex machine went into operation in June of last year. The other chillers include two Trane Model CVHB centrifugal chillers, and one older open-drive centrifugal chiller. The total installed capacity is 27,300 tons.

VARIABLE-SPEED PUMPING

At all three of the chiller plants, constant-speed chilled-water pumps were replaced with variable-speed pumps. With the reconfiguration of the plant and the change to direct-primary cooling, the installed pumping electric demand was reduced by 1,800 kW, according to Wilson. He said system pressures were reduced from as high as 50 psi to a nearly uniform pressure of 12 psi.

With the new piping grid and improved valving, chilled water can be pushed out to all parts of the campus efficiently. Wilson also noted that, with the installation of the CenTraVac chillers and the new pumps, acoustic levels in the mechanical plants have typically been reduced from 95 dB to 85 dB.

“These are now a lot more pleasant places to work,” said Wilson.

The success of the improvements is measured in dollars and in comfort. In the summer months, electric utility billings have dropped nearly $100,000 per month. This is attributed to the improved efficiency of the new chillers, as well as the dramatic reduction in pumping cost with the chilled-water grid, variable-speed pumps, and direct primary cooling.

Improvements in comfort are indicated by the dramatic reductions in complaint calls. All of the buildings are now receiving abundant chilled water at 40 degrees F and the temperatures don’t float upward during the day as they did previously. Wilson indicated that all of the system improvements contributed to resolution of the problem.

“The best part is that now we have better comfort and lower electric bills,” he said. “It took a while, but it was worth it.”

Publication date: 05/27/2002