the albert sherman center at the university of massachusetts (umass) medical school was opened in 2013 at the worcester, mass. campus and as part of its $400 million price tag was a state-of-the-art energy recovery system produced by swiss company konvetka ag that uses brazed-plate heat exchanger (bphe) technology to meet the university’s needs.

the albert sherman center uses a blazed plate heat exchanger system for cooling.
(wikimedia commons)

a recent report by facitlityexecutive.com outlined the details of the system that was put in place by umass.

the article explained, “konvekta determined that it would need to install two dedicated air handling units for use by the facility. after reaching that determination, the next step for konvekta was to decide which type of heat exchanger to use to properly recover the heat that would be generated during the periodic operation of the two air handling units. in the end, konvekta chose to outfit the units with brazed plate heat exchanger (bphe) technology.”

brazed-plate heat exchangers are built with corrugated channels and there is filler material between the layered plates.

the article added, “during the plates’ vacuum-brazing process, the filler material forms a brazed joint at every contact point between the plates, creating channels through which the media will flow. this also allows media at different temperatures to come into close proximity and enables heat or cold from one media to be transferred to the other in a highly efficient manner.”

the benefits of this process include lower maintenance costs, more efficient operation, smaller sizes required, and the ability to customize for specific applications.

at umass, the bphe system went online in 2015 and has been running for 16 months without a hitch, according to the article. the model at umass was selected for high-volume applications where flow rates could be as much as 56 m_­³/hr (246gpm) but also where the temperature difference between inlet and outlet is small, such as the 4°f difference at the sherman center.

read the full article at https://facilityexecutive.com/2017/04/heat-recovery-cool-umass-med-school-facility.