Recovering Heat: Big Wheels Turn Profit at UT's New Lab

By Jeff Hawk

Housed atop the University of Texas at Austin's recently completed $44.4 million Biological Science-Wet Lab Building, four large wheels are turning hot air into dollars and cents. The new 170,000-sq.-ft. research and laboratory facility uses huge heat recovery units to conserve energy by using some of the air the university has already paid to heat. The four 20-ft.-wide by 40-ft.-long by 30-ft.-high heat-recovery and air-handling units take up the entire encapsulated sixth floor.

"These are big puppies in the realm of laboratory buildings," said Bruce Kester, commissioning agent for the project's engineer, ccrd partners of Houston. Builders left the top level of the six-story building open while installing the heat recovery and air handling units, said Felton Sappington, project manager for Houston-based Vaughn Construction, who served as construction manager-at-risk. A tower crane wedged between bustling Dean Keeton Street and the new structure delivered system components to the rooftop mechanical space.

Contained within each unit are three types of heat recovery components-total-energy wheels, sensible-energy wheels and plate-heat exchangers. Total heat recovery using all three of these technologies is rare because of the need to isolate contaminated air from laboratory fume hoods. But designers engineered a way to segregate out the heat-wheel units, which collect exhausted air from the laboratory and office spaces, from the closed-system plate-heat exchangers.

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"We combined these two [heat wheel] systems while keeping them separated from the plate exchanger, preventing cross-contamination," said ccrd partner principal, David Duthu. Duthu's team worked with San Antonio project designer Overland Partners Inc. and Watkins Hamilton Ross Architects Inc. of Houston, the architect of record, to design the building's systems. Designers built system simulations to calculate energy efficiency prior to design efforts. Figuring out the most energy efficient layout for the lab structure was "key to the lab building's sustainability," said WHR's principal and project manager Peter Lotz. "Biochemical labs use a lot of energy."

But this one will use a lot less because of innovative design and construction efforts. "These devices add up to about a forty-five percent reduction in energy consumption for the heating and cooling seasons," Kester said. He added that the system not only saves energy, it reduces strain on the lab's main HVAC system and UT's overall chilled water requirements.

Scheduling delivery of the mechanical and other equipment and materials to a tight urban campus site with little lay-down space also proved challenging. "The deliveries had to be done at off-hours," said Bob Rawski, senior project manager for UT's facilities, planning and construction office.

The new cast-in-place concrete facility houses laboratory support and office space. Custom brick, cast stone, granite accents and orange-shaded clay roof tiles ensure the new, modern wet lab complies with the Longhorns' master plan.