For example, this energy building currently has a boiler room of more than 6 MW for heating, a large combined heat and power (CHP) plant for simultaneous heat and power production, a boiler room of 1 MW for steam production and a cooling plant of more than 6 MW with ice storage banks. The plants are currently nearing the end of their useful life.

At the request of the UZA, Ingenium studied the various possibilities for renovating the central systems of the energy building, taking into account the planned growth and renovation of the existing buildings.

To do this, Ingenium first analyzed the heat, cold and steam demand of the buildings and the operation of the current production facilities based on a data analysis of the measurement data from the past few years. There is a clear trend toward increasing cold demand and decreasing heat demand due to renovation projects. Next, Ingenium estimated the evolution of the expected energy demand in the coming years.

Subsequently, Ingenium studied the various possibilities for the new installations in the energy building. The study focused on the technical, energetic, spatial and financial aspects and took into account the water consumption and the expected CO2 emissions of the measures. Some of the options studied:

- Heat production:

* Evaluating and optimizing the operation of the CHP plant

* Evaluation of various heat pump solutions (obv simultaneous cold production, obv cooling water, obv low temperature heat flows from the CHP plant,...)

- Cold production:

* Evaluation of ice bank operation and ice bank loading and unloading strategy

* Evaluation of freecooling opportunities

* Evaluation of the various possibilities of chiller technology and associated chillers (cooling tower technology)

- Various steam optimizations

Finally, Ingenium created a strategic vision for how the campus can eventually move away from natural gas for heating.

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