In a unique funding arrangement, CU-Boulder's Porter Biosciences Building soon will be equipped with an energy-efficient heat recovery system funded in part by a private donation from Boulder residents Chuck and Patricia Palmer.
The $300,000 system will be installed into the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems of the laboratory building. Porter Biosciences is typically one of the largest energy users on campus because it continually exhausts 100 percent of its conditioned air from the building. Typical buildings exhaust only about 15-25 percent.
Building codes require that a continuous source of outside air be introduced into Porter to replace exhaust from laboratory spaces. This large volume of air is typically cooled in the summer and heated in the winter before it is introduced into the building.
The Palmers created an agreement with CU in which they will fund 50 percent of the project costs, if the associated utility cost savings generated by the system are reinvested in other renewable energy saving projects on campus. It is estimated that system will provide $25,000 to $30,000 worth of energy savings per year, and monitoring devices will be installed to quantify the energy savings. CU will fund the other 50 percent of the project expense.
According to Tom Cowing, CU's assistant director for engineering and utilities in Facilities Management, the gift could not have come at a more opportune time. "The building is being renovated currently and the cost of installing the heat recovery system will only increase over time. This combined investment will provide significant energy savings for many years to come."
The heat recovery system takes warm building air that is being released as exhaust in the winter, passes it through a heat exchanger and transfers a portion of the heat to the incoming air. In doing so, it reduces the amount of steam necessary to heat the incoming air.
Some cooling savings also are anticipated in the summer by pre-cooling the incoming air on very warm days. Additionally, the system will generate some electricity savings by reducing the associated operational load on the building's HVAC systems.
Chuck Palmer graduated from CU-Boulder with an electrical engineering degree in 1976. Following career opportunities with electronics firm Locus Inc., Penn State University and in the cable TV industry with C-Cor Electronics, he returned to CU to complete his master's degree, also in electrical engineering. He now works as a consultant.
Palmer's past support of CU-Boulder has included donations to the College of Engineering Dean's Fund and electrical engineering department, as well as the college's Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory.
"I've had a long-time desire to support CU, but in ways that make sense environmentally," said Palmer. "That includes growth management. I'm much more interested in designing efficiencies into buildings than in more and bigger buildings." He currently serves on CU's Resource Conservation Committee and Boulder's Village Arts Coalition.
The Porter retrofit project is expected to be completed by the end of 2002. As part of this project, it is anticipated that the installation of the heat recovery system will be completed and operational by the spring of 2002.
For more information on gift-giving opportunities at CU see . Persons interested in directly supporting energy and resource conservation projects on the CU-Boulder campus should contact Terry Mayes at the CU Foundation, Inc.