Best Practice Guide

Food and Beverage Growers and Processors

Central HVAC System

Industrial HVAC and Energy Use

HVAC basics
Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems regulate temperature, humidity, and indoor air quality by drawing outdoor air into the air handling subsystem, conditioning this air in either the chiller (cooling) or heating subsystems to correct temperature and humidity, and then venting the conditioned air to locations throughout the building as needed. How to approach HVAC upgrades depends on the particular characteristics of the building, the existing equipment in place, and any problems that might have been detected in indoor air quality.

Central HVAC systems tend to be oversized and often are not set for optimal efficiency. Before adding additional cooling capacity, have a qualified engineer inspect the system to see if a redesign or tune-up may be in order. Companies have saved as much as 50 percent on their energy consumption by adjusting control set points and modifying existing equipment. Fine-tuning HVAC equipment also dramatically lowers CO2 emissions-an important consideration for companies participating in greenhouse gas emission reduction programs.

General energy use characteristics
Facility heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems account for about nine percent of all industrial electricity and about seven percent of all natural gas use.

The goals for HVAC in industrial and manufacturing facilities differ markedly from other building types in that protecting materials and products is often as important, if not more so, as human comfort. Some factors influencing climate control and air quality requirements include:

  • Protection of raw materials and finished products that might be temperature sensitive, such as fresh produce or wine.
  • Production processes and equipment that add to cooling loads, such as boilers, motors, and compressors.
  • Conversely, process cooling that chills ambient air.
  • Opportunities to recover waste heat from equipment to heat air and water.
  • Air quality (i.e., filtration and ventilation) requirements for sensitive materials, such as semiconductors or biological products.

Industrial and manufacturing facilities also tend to have different structural elements that affect indoor temperatures and air quality. Quite often, these facilities are designed as high bays, creating a large volume of air that is extremely expensive to condition. Even in low bay buildings, open, box-like layouts are common, making it challenging to break up the space into zones that can be more easily controlled. Both lowbay and highbay buildings typically are constructed using denser building materials, such as concrete, that increase thermal mass and make it cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

Besides adding to cooling loads, process equipment also emits pollutants that must be safely vented outdoors, some of which must also be filtered to comply with air emission regulations. The HVAC system plays an important role safeguarding human health in these environments.

Each business will have unique needs, depending on location, size, industrial processes, equipment operations, and materials and products stored. A manufacturer without perishable goods, for example, might get by with nothing more than ventilation fans in the summer and personal space heaters in the winter. On the other end of the spectrum, biomedical research facilities may require heavy-duty heating, ventilating, air conditioning, and refrigerating (HVACR) equipment for both cold storage and clean rooms.



Resources

Northwest Food Processors Association Efficiency Practices website offers useful information and tips for the food processing industry.