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Monastery opts for biomass |
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11 Nov 2014, 6:56 PM
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A monastery in West Sussex has increased its green credentials by replacing an old and inefficient heating system with one running on biomass. The system includes a solar thermal buffer to supplement the thermal store of the main plant room.
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The Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Crawley Down, West Sussex contacted installers A Greener Alternative to invest in a greener heating system that was environmentally friendly, efficient and manageable.
The 60 kW Windhager BioWIN Excel boiler is situated in the plant room of the ‘Community building’ and provides heating and hot water for the various properties in the complex. The system comprises a solar thermal buffer to supplement the thermal store of the main plant room and further increase heating efficiency. In addition the installation also qualifies for the non-domestic RHI scheme.
The installers specialise in low carbon heating solutions and their project manager and technical heating expert, Simon Beach, designed and managed the installation at the Crawley Down Monastery. The design of the new heating system was vital in ensuring the clients requirements were met, taking into account their desire to reduce supply and running costs while negotiating the limited space in which to situate the system.
The wood fuelled system that was decided upon is fully automated and requires little maintenance due to its self-cleaning stainless steel burner bowl and integrated ash container. The automatic pellet feed system that directs the biomass fuel from the pellet store into the boiler further lessens the need for manual intervention.
Two separate 8 ton external wood pellet stores were supplied due to access reasons and they only need to be refilled once a year. Suction probes at the bottom of the pellet stores ensures a continuous supply of pellets to the boiler via underground pipes, with up to eight suction probes being used dependent on the size of the stores.
The systems efficiency is further increased with the inclusion of evacuated solar thermal arrays that have been installed on the adjacent Founders Wing roof. The heat energy generated from the solar thermal arrays supplies heating to the 300 litre solar thermal un-vented store that has ancillary heating primaries running to the main plant room. When the hot water demand has been met, the solar thermal store will supplement the thermal store of the main plant room and therefore preventing the unnecessary use of fuel by stopping over production of hot water.
Control of the heating system is managed by a Modular Energy System (MES) control solution. The system allows up to ten separate heating circuits to be operated from a single master control making it expandable for any possible future heating variations to the system. The MES control solution also handles the heat distribution by matching the optimum option to the clients’ heating requirements.
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