Spirax Sarco helps Aberdeen hospital reduce energy and maintenance costs
Aberdeen Royal Infirmary has reduced the cost of providing heating and hot water by 15% by converting from shell-and-tube calorifiers to EasiHeat systems from Spirax Sarco. In addition, up to three weeks’ of maintenance work has been saved each year as the old systems had to be stripped down for regular insurance inspections.
EasiHeat systems are compact, skid-mounted installations with a stainless-steel plate heat exchanger at their heart. They use plant steam to deliver a heating capacity of up to 1800 kW. Most of the engineering and quality checks are carried out offsite, so installation simply requires connecting the system to the appropriate utilities.
Trevor Stirton, estates office at the hospital, explains, ‘We made the decision to change because one of the calorifiers was nearing 50 years old. They were high maintenance, and we knew that modern systems could be more energy efficient.
‘We don’t have the new systems metered for steam consumption, so we can’t say exactly what they are savings, but it is estimated to be up to 15% overall for the heating and domestic-hot-water applications that we have replaced.’
EasiHeat systems provide domestic hot water on demand, so there is no longer any need to store hot water, which helps prevent problems associated with legionella bacteria.
