|
MUSC becoming more energy, water efficientby Christine von Kolnitz and Jack FranklinMUSC Recycling Did you ever wonder why there are pipes running overhead in the Rutledge Tower parking lot? What do all those maintenance employees do? How much electricity and water does MUSC use? What is MUSC doing to reduce its natural resource usage? Well this series of articles will attempt to answer some of those questions and more. MUSC is one of the largest employers in South Carolina so it would stand to reason that MUSC uses a lot of natural resources. In FY 02’, MUSC (excluding Rutledge Tower), spent $8.3 million on 142 million KWH of electricity, 2.8 million therms of natural gas and 13,000 gallons of fuel oil. MUSC also spent $1.4 million on 280,000 CCF of water. MUSC wouldn’t run without mechanical systems called conventional boilers, and chillers. The Engineering and Facilities Department and Hospital Maintenance are always working to improve these mechanical systems to increase energy and water efficiency and at the same time save money for the university, hospital and UMA. Basically, boilers working with pumps make and move steam to provide domestic hot water, steam for autoclaves, steam that is sent to coils to provide heating and steam that is sent to a bromide unit to provide air conditioning. The chillers and pumps make and move chilled water to coils to provide air conditioning. The chilled water is also used to cool equipment such as an MRI. See diagram:
In July 2002, Jack Franklin, a University Maintenance employee under the supervision of Joe Washington, was assigned to the Rutledge Tower boiler room. Franklin noticed that the system was using too much water and he investigated to find out why. In August, Engineering and Facilities staff and C and C Cleaver-Brooks personnel replaced the existing deaerator electric solenoid feedwater level controls with direct proportional mechanical feedwater controls. Before the change, the system used 5,000 to 8,000 gallons of water a day. After the change, the system now uses less than 600 gallons of water a day. The new controls shut off the water when it reaches a certain level in the tank. The system change saves not only water resources and the related expense but also chemicals to treat the boiler feedwater. Lost thermal energy used to pre-heat the large quantity of softened water and sewer charges based on the original quantity of water demand are also saved. The change was definitely a win-win solution for the university. It is true that we all must pay our water, sewer, electric, and gas bills but how much we pay is determined by us. Energy cannot be created or destroyed but it can be wasted. A drip here and there costs all of us. A case in point is the recent budget cut. The original cut was 5 percent. If you check your budgets you will also note an additional 0.61 percent cut. This money was cut from budgets across the board because it couldn’t be cut from fixed costs areas such as utilities. So you see the more we spend on electricity, water, and gas the less we spend on programs. Energy Saving Tips
|
