When UMMC planned to add a Shock Trauma Center to its campus, the new tower could not accommodate rooftop chillers due to its heliport. To solve this problem, the facilities staff sought to expand the capabilities of the campus’s existing central plants.

GOAL
To reduce energy through reclaimed heat

Background
The University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) in Baltimore serves hundreds of thousands of patients a year with a large campus including multiple buildings that address a variety of patient needs. UMMC administrators planned to add a Shock Trauma Center to provide specialized care for patients who are critically injured or ill. The resulting facility serves more than 8,600 patients a year and is the nation’s highest-volume trauma center as well as the first integrated trauma hospital in the nation.

Challenges
The heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) design for the Shock Trauma Tower arose from UMMC’s green mandate and desire to obtain LEED Gold status for the project, and from conditions specific to the facility. The challenge was that the Shock Trauma Tower could not accommodate rooftop chillers due to its heliport, where critically injured patients arrive by helicopter. For this reason the facilities staff sought to expand the capabilities of the medical campus’s two existing central plants in order to provide

ENERGY SAVINGS
The 23XRV can achieve 75 percent speed reduction versus just 35 percent for centrifugal compressors. The more speed reduction executed, means the more energy savings achieved.

Source: Carrier Corporation 2015

"We have no boilers to serve the Shock Trauma Tower. Heating comes from our heat recovery system and district steam. We anticipate using even more recovered heat as time goes on and we automate the process. All chillers produce heat as a by-product, so there is more to be captured."

- Sheila, Office Manager, Ibrahim Investment Corp.

energy efficient cooling, heating and domestic hot water to the Shock Trauma Tower and other buildings on the hydronic loop, which encompasses seven structures at a total of 2,300,000ft2.

Process
To achieve the expansion of heating and cooling capabilities, facilities staff at UMMC selected three Carrier AquaEdge 23XRV chillers and one AquaForce 30XW heat recovery chiller. The staff, already familiar with Carrier quality and reliability because of their chillers already in service, selected the additional Carrier chillers for three reasons:

• The energy efficient performance provided by their variable frequency drives;

• The heat recovery capabilities of the AquaForce unit;

• The chillers can deliver water chilled to a range of temperatures, a requirement when serving multiple structures of different ages and HVAC designs.

To maximize efficiency, the UMMC facilities staff operates its chillers in series during Baltimore’s hot, muggy summer weather, while during the winter when both heating and cooling are required simultaneously, the chillers are run in parallel.

All UMMC chillers (which use controls from Automated Logic Corporation, a Carrier

sister company) are maintained by Carrier Commercial Service.

The AquaForce heat recovery unit works by capturing the heat created during the refrigeration process and repurposing it to hot water, which can then be used for room heating or domestic hot water.


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