Top energy and water-saving trends in the HVAC industry in 2022

June 9, 2022 | Blog

Commercial buildings often draw more water and energy for cooling and heating than for any other use. Even the far more obvious culprits like manufacturing plants and R&D facilities are known for wasting too much water and energy through HVAC systems. While water consumption varies by climate and building type, studies show the HVAC system can account for up to 48 per cent of a building’s energy and water consumption, following by furnace using 31 to 37 per cent, and landscaping accounting for only 18 to 22 per cent.

However, most facility managers have no idea how much water they’re wasting through their HVAC systems. In most cases, a facility’s cooling tower that uses more than 3 gallons of water per ton-hour of cooling means that the HVAC system is running inefficiently. But with simple optimization strategies, operators can cut that usage to 2.5 to 2 gallons per ton-hour of cooling while reducing energy use and costs.

Luckily, cutting this waste is a happy byproduct of optimizing HVAC systems to reduce energy consumption and costs. Improving the efficiency of a central plant’s HVAC system, including automating components for achieving optimal performance in real-time, can cut chiller wastage by significant numbers. That’s why your energy and water savings must go hand in hand.

Hence, you need to start looking for HVAC optimization strategies and environment friendly solutions like SBR & ACCS to reduce HVAC’s water and energy costs, and track savings. However, they should also calculate the most efficient operation of the whole system in real-time through EMOS, an energy monitoring system, automatically and continuously optimizing the performance of the chiller plant.

Fortunately, HVAC products are getting smarter and more efficient day by day, which will help improve indoor environments and energy consumption better in the future. From technology that provides connectivity to your HVAC system and features designed to help improve energy and water savings, Tsur Ben David, CEO – CET Enviro, brings you the top energy and water-savings HVAC industry trends you need to watch out for.

Trend#1: Tracking Down Water Losses

Evaporation is the chief cause of water loss from cooling towers, followed by blowdown. Cooling towers typically store lots of water, leading to bacterial growth and solid buildups. Hence, that water must be replaced with fresh water regularly to prevent corrosion, scaling and let it run efficiently. And when a system is more efficient, less water circulates and less water needs to be flushed out, reducing the bleed-off quantity and the need for blowdown.
The other way to save water is through chillers operations. When chillers function more efficiently, they transfer less heat into the plant’s condenser system and thus reduce evaporation. By improving plant efficiency from 1.0 to 0.75 kilowatt per ton of cooling, facility operators can cut water usage by 10 per cent or more. The result is cost savings, reduced chemical usage, and a decreased carbon footprint. Non-Chemical water treatment technologies for Cooling tower, such as SBR can provide huge savings in maintenance costs.

Trend #2: Reduced Energy Consumption

With more focus on sustainable growth, most HVAC operators are looking for products and solutions that reduce their negative impact on the environment. According to recent studies, 40 per cent of energy consumption in the commercial sector are caused by heating and cooling. However, chillers are the single largest individual user of electricity in commercial and institutional HVAC facilities.
And when the performance of heat exchangers deteriorates due to the accumulation of deposits, biological growth, corrosion on heat transfer surfaces, the energy costs also go up. At some point in the operating cycle, the increased cost of power will be offset by the cost of cleaning.
To prevent this, maintenance and engineering managers need round-the-clock cleaning of chiller tubes, which is only possible through the Automatic Tube Cleaning System (ACCS).
It’s an automatic system that continuously cleans heat exchanger tubes while the equipment remains in operation and in full production. With automated maintenance and high-efficiency HVAC units running smoothly, HVAC operators get to reduce their energy consumption and take control of their energy costs. This leads right into our next HVAC trend: long-term energy cost savings.