The facility will be able to analyse up to 80,000 tests a year as part of research into improving the tolerance of major crops and other important agricultural plants to extreme conditions such as drought and salinity.
Lucid Consulting Engineers is providing specialist Building Services engineering for the complex, which includes thermal control systems for the greenhouses, grey water and rainwater collection, treatment and re-use. The project is jointly founded by the University of Adelaide, the Government of South Australia and the Federal Government.
The facility is designed to minimise energy use and water use incorporating initiatives such as tri-generation and significant rainwater harvesting and waste water treatment and reuse.
Energy Efficiency Features
The greenhouse areas require varying degrees of temperature control to satisfy their experimental purpose. Evaporative cooling is proposed to achieve an extent of cooling wherever possible, with air conditioning only proposed where precise temperature control is required, hence reducing the extent of greenhouses requiring energy intensive cooling and heating systems.
Evaporative cooling plant will incorporate BMS control to ensure that cooling water flow is only provided when required. Heating will be achieved by radiant hot water pipes, thus reducing energy associated with supply air fans in heating mode.
Greenhouses which require air conditioning will be served by chilled and heating water air handling units. The air handling units will contain evaporative cooling pads so that evaporative cooling (or raw outside air) can be used at times when conditions are suitable and/or precise temperature control is not required, thus reducing the demand for chilled water.
The air handling units are connected to a thermal plant arrangement which aims to achieve best practice in relation to efficiency, including the following features:
- High efficiency magnetic bearing water cooled electric chiller sets.
- A gas fired CoGeneration Plant delivering electrical power to the plant and heat to greenhouses in winter and to an absorption chiller in summer (“Tri-Generation”).
- Forced draft high efficiency boilers to supplement heat requirements.
Thermal plant modeling carried out to date indicates that this configuration will provide a reduction in greenhouses gas emissions of over 200,000 kg CO2 compared to a standard air cooled chiller/gas fired boiler arrangement with no CoGeneration facility.
All pump, cooling tower, air handling unit and miscellaneous fan motor drives will incorporate high efficiency induction type motors.
Although lift usage in the building is expected to be minimal, lift machinery is proposed to incorporate high efficiency variable voltage variable frequency (VVVF) drives.
All mechanical plant, hydraulics equipment and lighting will be controlled by a Building Management System (BMS). The BMS will provide a level of intelligent control to minimise energy wastage, over and above the industry standard control systems, by continually selecting optimum operating conditions. Control algorithms to optimise the combination of CoGeneration, electric chiller operation and absorption chiller operation will ensure that the systems are continually operating at their most efficient overall combined energy input. Furthermore the BMS will enable air handling fan energy input for both evaporative cooling and air conditioning systems to be minimised by reducing fan speed when greenhouse conditions are suitable via the use of variable speed drives. The BMS will be monitored for a 12 month period and set points and control algorithms will be “tuned” to ensure that optimum control for minimal energy input is achieved and maintained. The use of metering of all major plant, incoming power and gas and trend logging of all operating temperatures and parameters will assist with this tuning.
The facility will incorporate 2 major water efficiency and re-use features, namely rainwater collection and storage, and irrigation waste water collection, treatment and storage. It is proposed to collect, treat and reuse between 50% and 75% of water used in the facility.
Artificial lighting is required in general areas for amenity and in Greenhouses for day-length alternation. General areas such as offices and laboratory’s will use high efficiency fluorescent lighting with ‘T5’ lamps. Greenhouses will use high intensity discharge type lighting with electronic controllers to maximise efficiency.
A lighting control system reporting to the Building Management System will control all lighting in the complex, using time and motion sensors.
