Author
Mark Curley
Date
30th May 2022
Our goal at Corde hasn’t just been to set a new standard for ourselves and our clients, but rather to change the way people see buildings: how they’re being built, who they benefit and what they can achieve. Our projects aim to minimise carbon footprint while maximising positive impact and using innovative and focused design.
A good example of this is at the British Library in London, where Corde partner KJ Tait has recently been involved in two energy projects.
Located next to St Pancras Station, the British Library is a Grade I listed building and one of the largest buildings in the UK. KJ Tait’s aim was to assist in decarbonising the building and reducing running costs.
The project comprised a free cooling project and an installation of solar/thermal panels at roof level to reduce heating consumption. Both projects were grant-funded under the public sector decarbonisation scheme, and KJ Tait provided design and energy-saving details to support the grant funding application.
The free cooling project uses cooling towers controlled to provide cool water circulation. The project reduces chiller operation by bypassing the chillers via a heat exchanger connection to the chilled water circuit. To maximise on the free cooling benefit and the building’s year-round cooling load, the chilled water flow temperature will be increased from 8°C to 14°C. This enables the building to be free cooled when the outside ambient temperature is below 12.5°C.
The design alterations involve complicated pipe and control system alterations. The project will be completed for the end of April 2022.
The solar thermal project is based on the Naked Energy solar thermal products, which can generate water up to 80°C and include a nominal PV generated electricity of 13.5kW. This project will provide all the heat to the building air handling unit reheat circuits.
When installed, this will be one of the largest solar thermal projects in the UK, capable of providing up to 750kW of heating to the building. It will also be capable of meeting the majority of the yearly heating load of the library’s air handling and domestic hot water systems. The modelling carried out will also save 70 tonnes of CO2 annually.
This project is scheduled to be completed in June 2022.
