The LINQ
The central plant at The LINQ is designed and built with an eye towards providing an efficient and sustainable central plant. The goal was to provide a plant is efficient, easy to operate and maintain and will hold its efficiency over time.
What makes this plan different than most is its optimized simplicity. By using a variable primary flow plant design piping infrastructure and cost was reduced, while also reducing flow and pressure losses of a lower cost of operation. Direct mounting pump variable frequency drives to the pumps saved on material and installation labor, and the direct coupling removes troublesome harmonic feedback that affects the operation life of all the plant motors and electronics. To help maintain consistent and smooth operation, a 25 foot tall air and dirt separation helps to maintain a clean and air-free system for optimal heat transfer for years to come.
HEATING
Heating system incorporates the latest condensing technology. The 95% boiler operation efficiency, lower operating temperatures and higher boiler flow velocities have 2 major benefits:
1. Prolonged vale seal life for all the building’s control valves.
2. The higher flow rates will help prevent calcium and other fouling deposits from degrading boiler performance and efficiency common in other heating plant today. This technology will result in a 15% efficiency improvement over the previous boiler system technology
EPA AWARD
The last three major projects built by Caesars have all had one thing in common for their central cooling plants. That commonality is their chillers. The Trane chillers for this project are the only ones in their class to win an Environmental Protection Agency Climate Protection Award for “near zero” refrigerant emissions and a balanced alternative for reducing ozone depletion and global warming. Couple this with their high efficiency and proven dependability, these chillers were an ideal choice of the sustainable plant concept.
CONTROLS
As with all central plants, the controls make all the difference. With this in mind, this plant has a truly unique feature. Where most buildings stop with simple enable/disable controls, this plant implements the latest in optimized control strategies recommended by ASHRAE. It combines integrated algorithms that have proven themselves since the opening of the plant. To ensure that the system efficiencies are maintained, the Central Plant is monitored, tracked remotely 24/7 to prove their performance hour-to-hour and over the course of time.
With the provided design we estimate a conservative system efficiency improvement of 25-30% over a traditional primary secondary flow system at the high 90.1 efficient and systems standards. This simplistic design as few components to foul or fail resulting in a plant that is easier to operation and maintain. In the end this plant has fewer components to maintain, fail and therefore less to replace over time. This ease of operation and maintenance will result in a plant that saves on materials and energy today and throughout the life.
COMPARISONS WE CAN ALL RELATE TO
153,650,000 lbm/year Overall Reduction in CO2 equivalent to:
- Annual greenhouse gas emissions from 14,500 passenger vehicles
- CO2 emissions from 7,813,000 gallons of gasoline consumed
- CO2 emissions from 162,000 barrels of oil used
- CO2 emissions from 910 tanker trucks’ worth of gasoline
- CO2 emissions from the electricity use of 10,400 homes for 10 years
- Carbon sequestered by 1,787,000 tree seedlings grown for over 10 years
- Carbon sequestered annually by 57,127 acres of U.S. forests
*Reference: http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy-resources/calculator.html#results - 294,000 lbm/year Overall reduction in NO2
- 293,000 lbm/year Overall reduction in SOs