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Watercooled Hospital (Danish Article)

Arkrim
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Summary

 A new "super hospital" is being built in Aalborg, Denmark with a rather interesting indoor climate solution: leading a pipe from a nearby chalk-basin to the hospital to utilize the waters cooling effect. With the ambitious goal of being the most energy efficient and climate-friendly hospital in the world, this solution should reduce CO2-emissions compared to traditional cooling by 80-90%. Quotes are translated for your convenience since the article is in Danish. 

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Quotes

Quote

"When the water is pumped up from the chalk-basin at Aalborg Portland, it is led directly to an exchange station by the chalk-basin, where the temperature in the cold lake water is transferred through a heat exchanger to water, which circulates in a closed system through a 3.6 km long line to New Aalborg University Hospital. At the hospital, a cooling center with both exchangers and heat pumps will be built. The cooling center can thus be used to produce both cooling and heating, so that cooling can be supplied to the hospital and district heating to the district heating network."

 

My thoughts

Forget all about watercooling your pc's and office chairs. While i know this teeters the line between "tech" and i guess plumbing(?) the article does talk about this being a technologically driven solution. It will be interesting to see if this could start replacing the harmful air-conditioners which are so popular around the world, despite being walking-talking environmental hazards. At least if it's scalable beyond just one big building and you happen to live near a large cool body of water.

 

Sources

Tv2 Nord - Reputable local danish news site. Contains video of the pipe being lowered if that's of any interest.

 

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What happens when the basin heats up as a result of this?

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4 minutes ago, Fatih19 said:

What happens when the basin heats up as a result of this?

The article doesn't specify unfortunately. Luckily this isn't a natural basin, it's a place where they drill for chalk and other minerals, the cold water is just a by-product, so it shouldn't affect the wildlife very much. It does say that the basin sways between 5-14 degrees celsius throughout the year, but doesn't mention how much the temperature would rise. 

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20 minutes ago, Arkrim said:

Forget all about watercooling your pc's and office chairs. While i know this teeters the line between "tech" and i guess plumbing(?) the article does talk about this being a technologically driven solution. It will be interesting to see if this could start replacing the harmful air-conditioners which are so popular around the world, despite being walking-talking environmental hazards. At least if it's scalable beyond just one big building and you happen to live near a large cool body of water.

This really isn't new technology, just probably the first hospital to do so.

 

https://youtu.be/7zrx-b2sLUs?t=761

 

They are likely still using "air-conditioners" (heat-pumps actually, but still they are pretty much similar), they are just using the input temperature of the water to gain higher efficiencies.  The same can be used in winter to heat the building, because it allows the heat-pumps to work at a more optimal temperature.

3735928559 - Beware of the dead beef

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So basically a glorified swamp cooler?

 

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38 minutes ago, Arkrim said:

While i know this teeters the line between "tech" and i guess plumbing(?) the article does talk about this being a technologically driven solution

Nah man this is tech, cooling technology 👍

 

Even though not new or novel it's great to see more things like this happening, not to mention it's actually cheaper too.

 

27 minutes ago, Fatih19 said:

What happens when the basin heats up as a result of this?

It won't, sun energy would be putting more energy in to the water than the hospital will. The lake has a huge amount of thermal mass and surface area, including the earth basin.

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4 minutes ago, FakeATF said:

So basically a glorified swamp cooler?

Swamp cooler's work in a completely different way.  Swamp coolers evaporate water into the air to lower the temperature vs this tech transforms the heat/cold from the water by using heat exchanger.  It is more akin to heat-pumps most people use, except instead of using the air with fluctuating temps that are less optimal to the heating/cooling needs they are using a giant thermal mass that remains at roughly the same temperature all year round.

3735928559 - Beware of the dead beef

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9 minutes ago, Fatih19 said:

What happens when the basin heats up as a result of this?

I reckon the idea is that the rate of energy input < rate of energy output. Higher temperatures require drastically more energy to maintain, so this should not result in too much temperature difference. I'm not sure about any aquatic life in the basin (anyone have info?) that might still be negatively affected by even a small change in temperature, however.

That's an F in the profile pic

 

 

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How is this new? Heat pumps are used for ages this way, but they burry the piping underground into soil. During winters, underground is always warmer and during summers, underground is always colder. Heat pump then operates as thermal exchanger. Instead of burring pipes, they'll just submerge them in water. Which, again, it'll always be warmer than air above during winters and colder than air above during summers.

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Moved to Off Topic. The Tech News forum is for discussing tech topics relating to information technology, news concerning computers, phones, software, etc. Commercial building heating and cooling is "technology", but it's not the type of technology that is relevant to this forum.

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9 hours ago, Spotty said:

Moved to Off Topic. The Tech News forum is for discussing tech topics relating to information technology, news concerning computers, phones, software, etc. Commercial building heating and cooling is "technology", but it's not the type of technology that is relevant to this forum.

Sorry, i'm new on the forums, don't really have a firm grasp of the what belongs where yet

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