Heating experiment
01 November 2008 by Delft Outlook magazinePhysicists at the department of Multiscale Physics are turning the heating system in their new offices into an experiment. They will install a new type of heat exchanger devised by a department’s alumnus.
Earlier this year the first piles were driven in for the new office building located behind the Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering. After completion — scheduled for summer 2009 — the building’s rooms will be without air conditioning units or radiators. Instead, a room’s temperature will be controlled by discs suspended from the ceiling. This new type of heat exchanger is called FiWiHex, or Fine Wire Heat Exchanger. The name stems from the thin copper wires running around the outer edge of the disc. These hollow wires have water flowing through them. “The system can heat or cool a room even if the water temperature is only five degrees above or below the ambient temperature,” says Eur van Andel of the FiWiHex company. The discs will be installed in every room, and the occupants will control the room’s temperature by adjusting the speed of the fan inside the disc. “We wanted to include a special sustainability feature in the new building,” says André Groenhof, secretary of the multi-scale physics department. “We opted for an invention by an alumnus of our own department, Noor van Andel.” Heat pumps use the higher and lower temperatures in groundwater to adjust the temperature of the water inside the FiWiHex to the required level. The system saves a lot of energy, Groenhof states.
More information
André Groenhof, a.r.groenhof@tudelft.nl.
