Challenge
One of Europe’s largest providers of electronics packaging, assembly and testing was replacing its gas boiler and seeking a heat pump solution to provide free heating and energy-efficient cooling. The plant needs cooling for dehumidification during manufacturing processes while both cooling and heating are needed for employee comfort. The company has 900 emplyees working at its 500,000 square foot facility on Portugal’s Atlantic coast.
The company is working to decarbonize its operations through electrification of heating, together with additional sustainable solutions. Although aware that it will be hard to eliminate carbon emissions completely, the company’s goal is to ensure that most of their operations are powered by renewable energy in the future.
One of the challenges was the need to work with 16°C Delta T on the condenser side rather than a more typical heat pump delta T of 10°C. An additional challenge was the combined cooling and heating demand required by the manufacturing processes.
Solution
The company’s processes require precise temperature and humidity control throughout the year. Following a comprehensive analysis, the local Trane team recommended a water-to-water heat pump XStream RTWF 420 HSE. Cooling and heating loads overlap in most HVAC applications however most buildings have separated chiller and boiler rooms with no interaction between the two systems. The RTWF water-to-water heat pump links cooling and heating to provide all the cooling needed while delivering heating for free.
The design of our XStream heat pumps has been guided by the need to achieve the lowest energy consumption. The The RTWF units deliver market leading part load and full load efficiency performance. In addition, the selected High Seasonal Efficiency (HSE) version provides integrated variable speed with Trane Adaptive Frequency™ Drive for:
• Improved efficiency under part load conditions
• Improved capacity modulation
Trane XStream heat pumps are a smart alternative to traditional boilers with innovative and unique features such as:
• Trane industry-leading compressor especially designed for high temperature applications
• New generation of combined smart control and interface with full connectivity
• Trane patented compact, high performance, low charge (CHIL) flooded evaporator
Results
The XStream RTWF has been designed to deliver very hot water in every condition through a wide operating map. This ensures there is no reduction in temperature levels while minimising carbon footprint and reducing fossil fuel dependency.
At the customer’s plant in Portugal, the Trane solution has been designed to deliver 1750 kW of free heating. This heat is being delivered for free as a valuable by-product of the cooling process rather than being rejected to the atmosphere. Each kWh of heat from the heat pump represents at least one kWh less fuel consumption. The size of the heat pump installed takes into account the maximum cooling capacity required so as to take advantage of all available free heating allowing to greatly minimize the use of boilers.
