Combined heat, power and cooling system

For our customer in the pharmaceutical industry, we developed a combined heat, power and cooling system adapted to the special requirements of production. The special feature of the plant is, on the one hand, the required redundancy of the systems, as the client has to ensure the supply of electricity and heat to its customers at all times. On the other hand, cost-effective operation is only possible if the thermal energy generated during electricity production can be used for cooling or air conditioning via an absorption chiller (AKM) in summer.

The system, for which Antrok was responsible for the complete piping and installation of the components, consists of two gas-powered combined heat and power (CHP) units and two gas condensing boilers with a total heat output of 2 megawatts. The heat generated during electricity production is fed into several circuits: part of it is used directly to heat the building, while another part is stored in two 28,000-liter buffer tanks. In summer, this heat is used to operate an absorption chiller: With the addition of thermal energy, the temperature dependence of the physical solubility of two substances is used to generate cold. Thermally induced pressure fluctuations in the system are compensated for by an automatic pressure maintenance system.