Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.
Central Heating Plant
From UMassWiki
The Central Heating Plant is a campus landmark with its three tall smokestacks, and provides steam for heating and cooling most buildings on campus as well as electricity. It burns primarily coal along with some oil and natural gas.
The plant produces close to 1.2 billion pounds of steam annually using seven boilers at a yearly cost averaging $7.4 million.
The plant was constructed in the 1930s and, as with many coal-fired power plants, is a signficant source of pollution. In 1975 a modern oil fired plant on Orchard Hill went on line but due to some engineering miscalculation the main steamline ruptured in numerous places and the plant was never used. The old plant, no longer sufficient to meet the needs of the growing UMass campus, is due to be decommissioned in 2008 when a new, 10 megawatt gas- and oil-fired Central Heating Plant being constructed near the Mullins Center goes online.
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[edit] The new plant
[edit] Specifications
The new 98,000 square foot, $97-106 million facility will meet nearly all the energy needs of the over 400 campus buildings totalling approximately 10 million square feet of building space.
The plant is slated to initially supply 10 megawatts of electricity to campus, with contractor Johnson Controls -- also currently overseeing an energy efficiency retrofit of the entire campus -- installing two additional steam turbine generators with capacity totalling 4.5 megawatts after the plant becomes operational.
Steam, after passing through the generators, will be exhausted to the campus' steam pipes for use in heating and cooling. Three supplementary boilers, each capable of producing up to 125,000 pounds of steam per hour, will provide additional steam to meet demand during the cooler months of the year.
[edit] Environmental aspects
Utilizing clean-burning turbines and advanced pollution-control technology, the new plant may reduce emissions of ozone-destroying nitrogen oxides by up to 150 tons annually, and emissions of sulfur dioxide, a cause of acid rain, by up to 250 tons annually. Emissions of greenhouse gases and carbon monoxide will also be reduced.
The facility is also located near the campus wastewater treatment plant, and will recover wastewater for use in steam generation, reducing demand on Amherst's public water system by up to 200,000 gallons per day.
The plant has been designed with neighbors in mind after nearby residents raised concerns about light and noise pollution. Soundproofing has been integrated into the plan and the position of exterior lighting has been planned with minimum glare as a goal.
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