Killarney Community Centre – Heat Recovery Project

Facility: Killarney Community Centre

Completion: March 2021

Role: Commissioning Agent

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KCx Engineering was retained by Black & McDonald (M&E Contractor) as the Commissioning Agent for an active heat recovery project at Killarney Community Centre. The overall aim of this project was to reduce the carbon emissions associated with the facility heating systems for the swimming pools and natatorium. 

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To achieve the project objective an active heat recovery system, designed by Prism Engineering, was installed to extract thermal energy from the swimming pool natatorium exhaust air system and reuse this heat for space heating, swimming pool heating and Domestic Hot water. The new system includes an 80-ton heat recovery chiller, titanium heat exchangers, variable speed EC pumps and control valves to manipulate water flow through the system. The new low-temperature heating system includes a single connection back to the boiler heating system for backup or supplemental heat as required.

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Commissioning of such active heat recovery projects is complex due to the amount of additional control variables introduced to the system. Reducing carbon and energy consumption must be balanced with providing the required pool and comfort conditions. Reliable operation of these variable volume systems requires smooth manipulation of flow and energy to each part of the system. 

For this project KCx Engineering prepared a detailed Cx plan to minimize system downtime and allow a smooth transition to the new system. KCx performed advanced commissioning and data analysis to optimize the control sequences of the heat injection from the boiler system to minimize the high temperature heating water introduced to the system, thus minimizing the carbon emissions of the facility.