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System Integration
 Large office buildings, recreation facilities, manufacturing plants, schools, and churches often need heat or hot water in one area while they require cooling in another.
Recreation facilities are the most obvious examples of this. Anytime an ice rink is in use, heat must be removed from the ice. Traditionally, refrigeration systems take heat from the ice surface and expel it into the atmosphere through a cooling tower. Simultaneously, fossil fuels are burned to heat the rest of the building, to warm a swimming pool or to make hot water for showers.
Large office buildings often need heat in one area of the building while another area needs air conditioning. Without direct access to external walls, the building core needs to be cooled most of the time, while the exterior perimeter needs heat during cold weather. A heat pump system can be used to chill water to cool the building. At the same time, hot water is produced to heat the perimeter of the building.
When a building is unoccupied and the lights and computers are shut down, it may need heat. As the building is occupied, heat produced by the activities of the people warms the building, reducing the need for heat. If the building is heavily occupied, the building may need to be cooled even on the coldest day of the year. When it's needed, energy can be extracted from a chilled mass and used to heat the building . The chilled mass can then be used the next day to meet air conditioning demands.
The same concept applies to industrial food processing or plastic manufacturing plants that may need chilled water for a specific part of their production process and hot water or space heating elsewhere in the plant. Heat recovered from the refrigeration process is free.
Water-to-Water Heat Pumps
Water-to-water heat pumps manufactured by Ice Kube Systems are designed to produce fluid temperatures as low as 10°F (-12°C) to making hot water as warm as 145°F (63°C).
By connecting the chilled fluid side of the heat pumps to the pipes installed in a rink floor, and the hot fluid side of the heat pumps to a radiant floor heating system in the building, the heat pumps freeze the ice while simultaneously heating the building.
If the heat pump system is connected to an earth loop, it becomes an energy efficient alternative heat source for the building at night while storing heat taken from the building during the day. When other buildings are added to the earth loops, they use the otherwise "waste" heat while simultaneously improving the efficiency of the ice making process.
Geothermal Earth Loops
Geothermal earth loops have been used around the world for over 50 years and take advantage of the natural storage capacity of the earth itself. Excess heat from a refrigeration system can be stored in the earth when it isn’t being used in a building. Alternatively, it can be drawn from the earth when the building needs heat and the refrigeration system is not running.
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