Among the world’s largest facilities of its kind, this 1 million-square-foot aerospace site is devoted to the design, building, and testing of satellites.
Conditioned spaces throughout the facility are fed by a common chilled water generation and distribution system. The air-handling units and chilled water distribution piping are predominately roof-mounted. The piping network is fed from two chilled water plants that connect at opposite ends of the system.
- GBA developed a detailed hydraulic model of the facility’s chilled water system, including more than 150 connected air handlers and process load connections, and two chiller plants.
- Manufacturer’s data for pumps and chillers, along with field-verified piping system configuration (including segment lengths, sizes, and fitting counts), were incorporated into the model.
- After initial validation using spot data, the model was deployed to examine expected system flow dynamics under a range of current and proposed operation schemes. The results confirmed the feasibility of converting the chiller plants to variable-primary configuration and quantified the associated pump energy savings.
- In addition, conclusions were provided regarding the optimal strategy for sharing load between the two chiller plants.
