Henneman’s Design For Chilled Water Storage System at The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Reduces Energy Costs While Increasing Capacity and Reliability

A Conversation with Erik Haglund, EIT, LEED® AP

Henneman Engineering has a strong track record for designing chilled water systems and infrastructure at many universities throughout the Midwest.  The current project at the University of Illinois demonstrates the firm’s design innovations, along with the ability to create strong working relationships with clients. 

Construction recently began on the chilled water system infrastructure expansion to serve the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA)  super computer, IBM's Blue Waters, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  Henneman Engineering is responsible for leading the design which includes a new large scale thermal energy storage (TES) system. 
 
Erik Haglund, a mechanical engineer and project manager at Henneman, serves as the project leader.  With an engineering and project management background in higher education and healthcare, Erik led a team of eight Henneman engineers, along with several outside consultants.
 
The Henneman-led design team provided mechanical, electrical, plumbing, structural, architectural and civil design services.  The design was completed in early 2009 and took 10 months.  Construction will last until summer 2010.   Erik said that some of the main challenges on the project were:    

• Maximizing TES capacity to maximize energy cost savings.

• Remote tank and pump house location relative to the existing chilled water plants.  Hydraulic analysis of piping was critical to ensure the proper fill pressure was maintained at full load conditions.

• Site constructability on compact site.

• Integration of a TES system into the existing campus chilled water system.  

 
Henneman’s design includes a new large-scale TES system with a six-million gallon (50,000-ton hour) chilled water storage tank and pump house.  This TES system capacity exceeds the computer center’s demand load, thereby increasing the peak campus chilled water production capacity while increasing system redundancy and significantly reducing energy costs.  Comprehensive system modeling was completed, allowing the design to maximize the capacity of existing systems and defer the need for future chillers. 
 
The bottom line is that Henneman’s new design will save the University $820,000 in energy costs and a projected $110,000 in maintenance expenses, for a combined annual operating cost savings of $930,000.

Erik explained that the project was very rewarding because the design team was able to develop a solution to substantially reduce the client’s energy cost while simultaneously increasing the capacity and reliability of their system.
 
Regarding Henneman’s ability to meet the client’s needs Erik said, “Henneman’s strength is our close client relationships, responsiveness to our client’s needs, and striving to exceed our client’s expectations.” 
 
He continued, “We consider quality engineering to be a standard, minimum deliverable.  This project would not have been as successful if we had simply designed a TES solution that was ‘adequate’.  Instead, we worked tirelessly with the University to optimize the storage capacity, which maximized energy savings, and gave them the absolute best long-term solution available.”

LEADERSHIP SPOTLIGHT

Kip Doyle, P.E., LEED® AP

Senior Vice President · Director of ITG

Kip Doyle is the leader of Henneman’s Industrial Technology Group (ITG).  He joined Henneman-ITG in 1997 and serves as Senior Vice President - Director of ITG. Kip’s mechanical engineering career spans 20 years, with a number of years in the petrochemical and construction industries.  Kip is a registered professional engineer in Illinois, Florida, Arkansas, and Nova Scotia.  He received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1987.  Kip is also a LEED Accredited Professional.

The ITG Group has approximately 30 engineers with offices in Champaign and Chicago.  Under Kip’s leadership, the ITG Group specializes in industrial projects including power generation plants, food processing, manufacturing, and renewable energy.  When it comes to energy ITG has the spark to make it happen.  ITG has designed conventional power plants including gas turbines, steam turbines, reciprocating engines, coal, biomass, and natural gas facilities.  ITG has also designed wind, solar, geothermal, heat pumps, steam generators, and syngas facilities.
 
One of ITG’s strengths is that we strive to be ecologically responsible while pioneering all renewable sources of sustainable and economically viable energy.   According to Kip,“we not only design new energy and process plants, we have an entire sector of our business devoted to improving existing designs to satisfy our customers need for a more efficient business.”

One of Kip’s most cutting-edge projects is currently with Chip Energy Group, a renewable energy client that has a new product coming to market.  The new product is a biomass gasifier.  The gasifier can burn any biomass that is the proper size from wood chips and cherry pits to walnut shells and acorns.  Chip Energy Group hopes to provide hot water heating systems that would serve grade schools, office buildings, and small industrial facilities.  Kip and the ITG Group did the process design, detail layouts, wrote the control scheme, and assisted Chip Energy with the overall design for a new kind of heating plant unit.

“This new biomass heating unit has a very unique design that is environmentally friendly by using natural waste materials instead of coal or gas.  It’s a new design of an old process that creates a very clean way to burn waste energy,” Kip said.  The unit is being tested as a prototype and has received a grant from the EPA.  ITG will work with the client through the next phases to bring the product to market. 
 
Kip says the ITG Group has a tremendous edge because everyone comes from an industrial background.
 
“Almost everyone in the ITG Group came from industry,” Kip says.  “Our people have all worked at large companies like Cargill, Bunge, Illinois Power, and ADM for example.  This experience really gives us an edge in working with our industrial clients.”  ITG has been doing energy saving projects, energy improvement studies and energy reduction programs since its inception in 1997.  Industrial clients have always been large energy users and are in need of energy reduction programs.