Heat Pipe Technology, Inc., a division of MiTek, a Berkshire Hathaway company, today announced that the company’s recent case studies show a consistent return on investment for heat pipe technology implementations in university, resort-hotel, and hospital settings. Heat Pipe Technology specializes in passive energy recovery and dehumidification systems for commercial applications. Employing the very latest in passive-heat-transfer technology, Heat Pipe Technology designs and supplies the core energy recovery technologies to the world’s leading commercial air-handling equipment manufacturers.
In one case study, which profiled the heat pipe implementation for a pathogen research facility at a major Florida university, the HVAC design engineers needed to control humidity and temperature, and recover energy from exhaust air, while preventing cross contamination of the laboratory air. The Heat Pipe Technology solution (a Vertical Tube Energy Recovery and Dehumidification system) achieved the required humidity, temperature control, and energy savings.
Heat Pipe Technology installed just three heat pipe systems, but the facility immediately saved over $10,000 annually, even while running at fractional capacity. The annual savings of this LEED Gold facility – in fuel and operating costs – will top out at nearly $60,000, yielding a three-year return on the investment, plus ongoing savings.
In a second HPT implementation, the Omni Resort at Champions Gate (a 720-room facility in Orlando), the hotel needed to dehumidify very humid outdoor air. Before HPT’s implementation, the outside air had to be cooled so much during the process that it required reheating with costly electric heat strips before use in the hotel’s rooms and hallways. HPT installed wrap-around heat pipes, which are passive and powered largely by air temperature differentials. The Omni Resort is now able to maintain its required temperature and humidity levels without supplemental electric heat, a substantial savings. Since 2005, when HPT first engaged Omni Resort, the total savings are now over $400,000 annually.
Finally, in a recent HPT implementation at a Minnesota hospital, energy from exhaust air could be recovered year-round to precool or preheat supply air, but the hospital required that the supply air not be contaminated by exhaust air. HPT’s Energy Recovery Heat Pipes (HRMs) utilized a phase change approach to capture energy from the warmer air stream and transfer it to the cooler air stream, without contamination, at an estimated savings of almost $12,000 a year, resulting in two-year payback for the hospital’s investment.
“We consistently see short paybacks on HPT’s implementations,” said Mazen Awad, HPT’s senior vice president of sales and marketing. “What’s remarkable is that the HPT implementations pay for themselves in short order, but then our customer sees ongoing savings for years to come.”
Source: Business Wire
