Skanska cools it at Mansfield hospital

Skanska UK is entering the final stages of installing a 5.4 MW ground-source cooling system within Kings Mill Hospital in Mansfield.

The system can also provide supplementary low-grade heating to the gas-fired boiler installation when cooling demand is low. Coventry-based Geothermal International has been employed by Skanska as a partner to develop and deliver the scheme.

The ground-sourced cooling and heating technology will reduce carbon emissions and result in significant running cost savings. It will also set a benchmark for the NHS, changing the way hospitals are cooled and heated in the future.

According to Skanska, it will be the largest geothermal lake loop installed in Europe.

The system, which has been used to great effect in the US and widely adopted in northern Europe, will use a network of heat exchangers submerged in neighbouring Kings Mill Reservoir.

The heat exchangers are connected via pipes to the hospital, where heat pumps extract or reject heat from the reservoir to provide either cooling or heating to the new development.

When the water flows back through the heat exchanger plates in the reservoir, the temperature imbalance is partly restored by the reservoir without contamination because the system is a closed-loop system, and no reservoir water is used directly.

For every 1 kW of energy used, 4-7 kW are produced by the system, which means that not only are CO2 savings anticipated, compared with more traditional systems, but energy bills will also be significantly reduced.