Sustainability
www.heatingandventilating.net
Retrofi tting boilers with
high temperature heat pumps in logistics industries
The United Kingdom has outlined its intentions to achieve Net Zero by 2050. To make this concept a reality, Scope 2 emissions (associated with the purchase of grid energy) of buildings are required to dramatically decrease. Dr James Crosby-Wrigley, head of sustainability at Advantage Utilities, outlines why a cornerstone of Net Zero progress is the implementation of alternative renewable and energy effi cient technologies
A
major asset of energy consumption for most buildings is their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems (HVAC). These
important assets form the primary infrastructure utilised to control ambient and operational functions required for heating and cooling. A case study from an existing logistics fi rm helps to examine the environmental benefi ts and economic implications of a high-temperature heat pump replacing their existing boiler under a retrofi t regime.
The caveats of mains gas boilers
Across the UK, a common mechanism of infl uencing building environments is through boilers powered by mains gas. However, utilisation of these boilers has two key caveats: a) With the volatile and rising cost of gas over the past 24 months, their operational cost has seen a sharp increase. b) Gas is a highly pollutive source of energy, with 2024 government emissions factors publishing 0.184 kg CO2e/kWh, only slightly below the equivalent factors for grid electricity (0.205 kg CO2e/kWh). This has caused a rise in the number of businesses looking to become more sustainable and have more certainty over the price of energy that they consume.
24 October 2024 Facility of logistics fi rm
Understanding the needs of a facility is essential, which is why it is essential to calculate what the historic heating requirements from a building have been. This can simply be done by utilising the heating degree days (HDD) approach combined with the monthly gas demand of the facility (Graph 1)
For the logistic fi rm’s facility, what becomes apparent is that the gas usage is near-directly proportional to the ambient temperature of the surrounding area (R2 = 0.95). Therefore, it is possible to directly utilise local temperature fl uctuations to calculate historic heat demand at higher frequencies (e.g. hourly).
Graph 1
This eff ective insight can provide an excellent
extrapolation for the required kWh demand needed to heat the facility. This is done using a simple correction factor of the existing boiler effi ciency
(90% effi ciency, equating to a ~1.1 correction factor). Lastly, and most importantly, this energy demand can then be converted into the power requirement for a high temperature heat pump operating under
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