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Sustainable Technologies for Old Buildings: Energy
Reduction from Chilled Beams
Donald Haiges, P.E., SEi Companies
At the heart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) campus is the Main Building Group, a 1.1 million square foot
historic academic complex built almost a century ago. This "Group"
is comprised of 10 contiguous buildings, which house office, classroom,
lecture, teaching facilities, and research laboratories. Faced with
the need for historic preservation, years of deferred maintenance,
heavy energy consumption, and inadequate infrastructure, the institute
developed a master plan to comprehensively address these issues
for positioning the building for the 21st century.
MIT's goals were to celebrate the sustainable merits of the existing
facility, undertake the repositioning in a sustainable and responsible
manner, introduce new technologies for energy reduction, position
the building for the next 100 years of operation, and keep the building
in operation during construction.
While chilled beam technology has been used in Europe for many
years, it is still relatively new in the United States. This presentation
will show how the use of chilled beam technology was used in reducing
mechanical space requirements, limiting large duct distribution
systems, reducing energy and large air handling equipment, reducing
electrical service and demand, and providing a method of dual infrastructure
until all systems change-over could be complete. This presentation
will also explore the alternative systems evaluated, from conventional
systems to displacement ventilation to the chilled beam solution.
Actual reduction in system sizes, costs, and energy will be presented.
The lessons learned from the installation of this technology in
the laboratory environment—the good and the bad—will also
be presented. Finally, this presentation will present insight into
when this technology is appropriate and when it is not based on
this experience.
Biography:
Don Haiges is a principal
with the SEi Companies, a national mechanical and electrical engineering
consulting firm. He is an architectural engineering graduate from
Penn State University with 30 years of engineering practice and
is responsible for the design of institutional and corporate research
facilities. Don has been responsible for the engineering conceptualization,
design, and start-up of more than 15 million square feet of such
research facilities. Representative clients in the academic community
include MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Brown, Tulane,
Yale, and Middlebury; and Dupont, Lederle, Merck, Hoffmann-La Roche,
Novartis, Pfizer, and Wyeth-Ayerst in the pharmaceutical arena.
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