In this article, a departure from typical HPAC Engineering content, a fictional conversation about a system that may or may not be in existence is presented to, in the words of the author, “plant the seed of an idea with people (who) might actually implement” it and start a (real) discussion.
Fred, a mechanical engineer, was bursting to tell William, a civil engineer, all about his design for a new campus chilled-water system. They had been friends for years and met weekly for lunch at their favorite restaurant.
“So,” William said after listening to Fred describe the system, “let me get this straight: You are designing a system to feed chilled water to the entire campus, and it is different from other systems because it is ‘buffered.’ The buffering is accomplished by a stratified tank that stores chilled water to let it be used later in the hour or day. I have heard of storage of chilled water in stratified tanks to reduce daily demand charges. Is that what this is about?”