case studies

Palladium Heat Pump launch at Greenpeace UK

Project Overview

Pure Thermal has provided the latest ultra-low noise Hydrocarbon Heat Pump to Greenpeace UK to provide a low carbon retrofit heating solution at their Central London Headquarters.

Greenpeace, the leading international environmental NGO, has made a real statement of its commitment to sustainability by installing this Propane (R290) Heat Pump at its 1920s office building in Islington North London.

The new Palladium 85kW Palladium 120.4 unit, manufactured by the Italian company Enerblue, provides both space heating and hot water to the main office building replacing its old gas boiler. This installation marks the UK launch of the Enerblue Ultra Low Noise Palladium range of R290-based heat pumps, designed for commercial and industrial applications.

To launch the Palladium range Pure Thermal, the Enerblue UK partner/distributor, hosted an event at the Greenpeace offices on September 3.

The event showcased this operational Palladium 120.4 highlighting the extensive features of this innovative range:

PURE EFFICIENCY | PURE SUSTAINABILITY | PURE SAVINGS

What is Palladium?

A New Air Source Heat Pump Range Manufactured by Enerblue

What’s special:

Natural Hydrocarbon Refrigerant and Ultra Quiet Noise Levels with High Performance

Is this technology new for Enerblue?

No, Enerblue has been manufacturing R290 Heat Pumps for over 10 years

Key Features

  • Palladium is a Heat Pump or Simultaneous Heat Pump/Chiller
  • Palladium is suitable for commercial and industrial new build retrofit projects
  • Palladium operates with ultra-low noise levels between 73 to 76 dba sound power
  • Palladium can provide 4 pipe heating + cooling functionality
  • Palladium can recycle waste heat with high efficiency levels
  • Palladium can operate as a dual source heat pump, providing great flexibility

Application: The Greenpeace Heat Pump Story

While a definite commitment to move away from fossil fuels was a given, Greenpeace studied available technologies and considered many possible Heat Pump manufacturers before choosing the Palladium range.

They carried out a detailed and diligent review of the market and the track record of manufacturers, which led them to Pure Thermal and their experienced application engineering team.

Based on the location being within a residential area with stringent nighttime noise levels, the heat pump sound level was a very important and critical driver. Once the Palladium performance levels had been reviewed and its ultra-low noise levels had been modelled, then it was clear that for their demanding application, it was clear that this Natural Refrigerant range was definitely in front of the market.

For these reasons, the Greenpeace team determined that Palladium was the way forward in terms of meeting the demands of this application.

Equipment Schedule & Technical Overview

The Palladium 120.4 unit, measuring 3.8m long x 1.3m wide x 2.4m high, was craned onto the site in July and was commissioned in early August.

This Palladium heat pump has a rated heating capacity of 114kW, it operates with two circuits with two scroll compressors on each circuit. By operating independently, the twin circuits are also key to the unit maintaining a high efficiency during defrost.

The defrost strategy is one which will not allow any degradation of output temperature while the heat pump is in defrost mode. This design is highly innovative, but a completely understandable inclusion based on the 10 years plus R290 design experience that Enerblue is able to boast.

In terms of the refrigeration systems efficiency microtube evaporator coils provide a large heat exchange surface, while the R290 charge per circuit is just 4.8 kg, delivering a SCOP of 3.58.

The range of Palladium heat pumps has been designed to allow units to be used in applications where noise must be minimised, so was seen as ideal for this residential area installation. It features an acoustically minimised design as standard and achieves a sound power level of 73dBA.

Palladium Hydrocarbon Heat Pump

Summary

The Palladium 120.4 provided an ideal solution for this project and definitely showed that applying Hydrocarbon R290 Heat Pumps within challenging applications is practical. The ultra- low noise level of the 120.4 unit at 73dBA sound power level meant that no secondary attenuation was required to meet the very low noise level required in this residential area of Islington.

“This project is a great example of a hydrocarbon heat pump providing high performance and resilience in a commercial application located within a residential area in central London,” said Garry Broadbent of Pure Thermal, continuing,’ The Palladium range is ideal for these types of project where it would not be practical or possible to use a standard noise Level heat pump’’.

The credentials of the Palladium range ensure that designers/specifiers have significant flexibility to apply these high specification Heat Pumps within the most demanding of applications whether in heating only or simultaneous heating + cooling modes.

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