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J U N E 2 0 2 3 | 57 Mechanical & HVAC Systems Revolutionary mechanical and HVAC systems take centre stage in industry innovations by ROBIN BRUNET A rguably, the COVID lockdowns have been overly credited for building owners realizing the importance of proper ventilation in their facilities. "A lot of focus was being drawn to this issue long before the pandemic ever happened," says Tom Todoruk, national sales manager at Tempeff. "The lockdowns intensified the need, so in 2023 the goal for HVAC is to get as much fresh air circulating in the interior as pos- sible, regardless of what kind of building it is." Tempeff is an example of a company that goes beyond standards in striving to create healthy air environments, in response to systems such as single core heat recovery ventilators facing failures and other challenges due to freezing outside temperatures, (which cause units to stop circulating air or lead to mould growth). Tempeff's DualCore system uses two heat exchangers compared to the single exchanger in conventional units; outside air goes through one exchanger for one minute or so at a time before switching to the other exchanger, so it doesn't have time to build up frost. The DualCore systems are designed for commercial and industrial buildings. Their success in extreme climates – they have been tested extensively by the National Research Council Canada (NRC), in triplexes built in the Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay – has led the company to develop a unit that can be placed in residential buildings. "The RGSP-K units that have been in use for the past year achieve the same 90-plus percent efficiency as our commercial systems, and are very cost effective," Todoruk says. Specifically, RGSP-K configured units complete with DualCore technology allow for the ability to fit even in the most compact layouts, while still offering up to 92 percent sensible and 70 percent latent heat recovery in winter, without the need for a defrost strategy. Todoruk says, "Schools, especially in this post-pandemic time, are in a mad rush to improve their provision of fresh air for classrooms and public spaces. But a typical school's boiler is set to a certain capacity and there's not much spare room to expand. The beauty of the RGSP-K units is that they can be installed above a drop ceiling or even in a closet." Meanwhile, testing of Tempeff's highly customizable ERV equipment is playing an important role in helping to grow vegetables in extreme cold environments. "Growing vegetables is tough and costly to do in our northern regions, but the NRC is testing our ERVs in shipping containers that have been transformed into grow facilities," Todoruk explains. "So far the results have been fantastic in Saskatoon, and this winter the ERVs and containers will be tested in an Arctic location. The results could be a game changer for food provi- sion in the north." Another company that goes far beyond mechanical and HVAC standards is Thermenex, whose patented Thermal Gradient Header (TGH) is a simple hydronic approach to HVAC systems that utilizes a patented piping framework and corresponding standardized control logic. The header is built to serve as the core of an efficient, effective, sustainable HVAC system, and integrating a TGH framework into a holistic HVAC design allows engineers to design a system that outperforms anything else in both energy consumption and carbon emissions. Thermenex's technology, once controversial and now considered revolutionary, seems counterintuitive at first glance: achieving thermal efficiency using a pipe with hot water at one end and cold water at the other. In fact, the TGH has six distinct temperature regions that are separated using a simple hydronic design; this enables matching of source temperatures with the variable load require- ments of a building. Jeff Weston, president and CEO of Thermenex, is especially excited by his company's progress in 2023. That's because a client, Providence Health Care (PHC) under the direction of Tony Munster, won the International Federation of Healthcare Engineering (IFHE) 2022 Global Healthcare Energy Award for PHC's St. Vincent's Brock Fahrni assisted living pavilion. The accolade was in response to the facility achieving the largest energy reduction in the Canadian health-care sector. In 2021 a heat recovery chiller sys- tem with a TGH designed by Impact Engineering and Thermenex was installed; it extracted waste heat that would otherwise be lost and used it to heat the build- ing and produce domestic hot water. The result was a 68 percent energy saving and 82 percent carbon emission reduction. Weston says, "The pendulum has fully swung in that clients are focused on zero carbon buildings and less concerned about the cost of switching to electric- ity. Electrification has become the new mantra of the HVAC industry. We took a different approach we call thermalization before electrification." He adds that he concocted the term thermalization for buildings "to describe the fact that Go With The Flow P H OTO G R A P H Y CO U RT E S Y T H ER M EN E X ; T EM P EF F V EN T I L AT I O N T EC H N O LO G I E S Thermal Gradient Header installed at St. Vincent's Brock Fahrni assisted living pavilion. RGSP-K configured unit with DualCore technology.

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