World leading science park chooses Spirotech’s ‘Superior’ vacuum degassers
Alderley Park, a world leading campus for life science research and development, has installed Spirotech’s most advanced vacuum degassers as part of a facilities upgrade. The powerful ‘intelligent’ SpiroVent Superior S600s, for closed heating, cooling and process systems, deliver increased performance with greater connectivity, along with lower energy consumption and reduced maintenance.
The S600s, along with respective 450-litre and 750-litre expansion tanks, have been installed in plantrooms housing the chilled water cooling systems for offices and laboratories in two buildings on the Park’s Mereside life science campus. A Bruntwood SciTech development situated south of Manchester, Alderley Park is home to over 200 businesses, ranging from innovative start-ups to global corporates.
The vacuum degassers play an important role in helping to keep the two buildings’ cooling systems operating at optimum levels.
They remove all gases from the system fluid - free air, microbubbles and dissolved gases – as any air left in the system would lead to corrosion and a destructive sludge developing, also creating noise from components such as pumps, which would cease to work efficiently.
“As the LTHW and CHW systems age and develop leaks, system water quality and dissolved oxygen levels increase, increasing the risk of failure and system difficulties, which in turn reduces customer satisfaction."
Liberating gases
The vacuum degassers work by decreasing the pressure in the vacuum vessel that sits within the unit, liberating dissolved gases from the system liquid in the vessel, which accumulate and can then be expelled. Able to service higher volumes of system fluid, up to 1,000-litres per hour, the S600s are fully automatic with a fully electronic control system that enables remote access via either a LAN or wi-fi.
Philip Riddeal, of consulting engineers Silcock Leedham, said “The Spirotech system prevents oxygenated water being introduced and allows closer monitoring of system fill water, this gives the water treatment specialist a head start when it comes to water quality.
“The systems on site at Alderley Park are process critical, keeping the process cold water system that feeds the closed systems protected is extremely important for obvious reasons.”
Philip added: “The products supplied by Spirotech so far meet all of our high expectations of them. We are engineers and proud of it, we strive to assist our clients by engineering the right sustainable solutions for them; Spirotech’s current range assists us in this endeavour.”
"By continuously degassing quantities of the system liquid, the SpiroVent Superior keeps the negative effects of dissolved and liberated gas to a minimum."
Smart monitoring
Rob Jacques mentions that: “Inline deaerators will not work anywhere near as effectively in high-rise offices and other tall buildings. Air is difficult to remove in low temperature systems, which compounds static height issues when over five metres.”
A SmartSwitch continuously monitors the volume of removed air, and will switch off when the minimum dissolved gas level is reached. Rob added: “The vacuum degassers also ensure the system pressure never drops too low, with positive pressure maintained throughout. They also include a Category 5 break tank, which ensures that a ‘more than adequate’ backflow prevention is achieved, while avoiding costs associated with the alternative solution of an RPZ (Reduced Pressure Zone) valve.”
The SpiroVent Superior S600, along with the smaller S400, is easy to install and engineers can access quick installation guides by scanning a QR code on their mobile phones. Once commissioning is complete, control and monitoring can be done using a touch screen on the unit, through a building management system or via the internet on a PC, tablet or smartphone. Functions such as on/off, error and alarm reset, and degassing, refill and boiler interlock on/off can be controlled remotely, while parameters can be set for such things as system pressure and refill pressure.
Real time data
The SpiroVent Superiors also include a comprehensive unit status and event history, providing real-time data and enabling performance to be tracked in detail over time.
Rob said: “The SpiroVent Superiors have been developed based on Spirotech’s 30 years’ experience in degassing technology. They are the most effective vacuum degassers on the market and, we believe, are the only units that offer the three functions of degassing, pressurisation and a Category 5 break tank in one single unit.
“The flexible, high level connectivity they offer is an exciting addition that meets the market’s requirement for more information gathering. This will, among other things, enable predictive maintenance and servicing, leading to increased reliability and performance, and ultimately cost savings.”