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GREEN SYSTEMS


28


Chemical Manufacturer Exceeds Local Demands to Go Green


C


rouched on the banks of Mount Hope Bay and the Taunton River, Fall River,


Mass., traces its origins to settlers who, in 1659, drifted over from the Plymouth Colony. Fast forward to the Industrial


Revolution, a time when Fall River earned the title “Textile Capital of the World” and the nickname “Spindle City.” By 1911, the city was recognized as the world’s largest manufacturing port. It was all about coal, then fuel oil, power


transmission, electricity and egregious waste. Hey, our ancestors were hard at work. In Fall River, “FREE” is the greenest


of contemporary acronyms, referring to the Fall River Energy Enterprise. It’s a vision plan that provides the town with a direction for economic revitalization with renewable energy projects such as wind turbines and tidal energy generation and adaptive reuse of historic mills. Ultimately, community leaders seek to position Fall River as a regional leader in renewable energy, hoping to attract new business and create jobs, while making the city greener and less dependent on fossil fuels. “Preservation is the ultimate


recycling. It takes about 65 years for a new, energy efficient building to recover the energy lost in demolishing an existing building,”


said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Preserving and reusing is exactly what one Fall River company is doing with several turn- of-the-century textile mills. Borden & Remington Corporation,


referred to as “Boremco,” is a leading national commodity chemical manufacturer. The company’s 26-acre site at the edge of town includes several of the “recycled” textile mills. One of the oldest firms in the community, Boremco recently funded major mechanical system improvements, resulting in a 75 percent decrease in energy costs. Previously, a 1950s-installed


central steam plant was used to heat all the buildings on the site. The 15- million Btu, gas-fired steam boiler dispatched steam through a leak- plagued distribution system. It provided freeze protection to over one million square feet of manufacturing space. That is, until


early in ’09, when Boremco contacted Thermo-Mechanical Systems Corporation in Assonet, Mass.


Up in smoke; er. . . steam “The system was using 10 gallons of


condensate makeup water every minute,” said Bob Kelliher, V.P. of Thermo-Mechanical, a firm that’s been designing and installing


commercial mechanical systems for the past 20 years. Currently, the company has 16 employees, several of whom spent a year on the design phase for the Boremco project. “The level of waste heat lost


through the distribution system equaled five million Btu every hour, or a full third of the boiler’s capacity … thrown away,” continued Kelliher. “We finished the system design and


started the installation in the spring of 2010.” The old steam plant was taken


offline, and the leaky distribution system was abandoned. Also, management at Boremco decided to consolidate production space. Unoccupied, beyond repair, and now no longer being heated, two of the buildings are slated for demolition. A few other buildings on the site are rented out as manufacturing space to other companies.


Controls to the rescue To replace the steam system,


Thermo-Mechanical installed four rooftop units to heat two 110,000-sq. ft. buildings. Each rooftop system is a 1.2-million Btu, gas-fired modular Modine. All rooftop units are controlled by a BLMC iWorx module that includes an outdoor reset function with a variable discharge air


e Continued on p 30


phc october 2011 www.phcnews.com


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