Paul T. de Vreede

Gold

Sustainabie Buildings Expert

Shanghai, China

Dutch, English

€100 - €200 / hour

The Faimont in Monte Carlo was facing a major problem due to many of the chilled water pipes from the guestrooms above the public areas were condensating due to malfunctioning insulation. Watermarks and peeling plaster and paint was visible on the ceilings of the public spaces below the guestrooms. Opening all the ceilings and replacing piping from below would mean closing the hotel. With pre-insulated, quick coupling pipe systems from Switzerland, Paul developed a plan to replace the piping to and from the guestrooms from the top floor down, parallel to the existing piping. With part floor out of service at a time the implementation took 3 months only. Public spaces below could remain untouched and gradually ceilings were repaired at nighttime.

Back in 1990 Manila had daily power failures and located in a tropical climate, air-conditioning for buildings is essential. The building had 3 units of 400RTon Centrifugal chillers, which after power drop require 30 minutes for restarting; resulting in daily no cooling. There was no space for full backup diesel generators. Therefore, Paul exchanged one Centrifugal chiller for 4 units screw compressor chillers with a restart time of 5 minutes only. Although the efficiency of these chillers was lower than the existing ones, the end result was that the building could be cooled quickly and from an energy point of view 30% more efficiently, as it requires more energy to restart the centrifugal chillers.

The vast expansion of major cities in India cause serious instability is the electricity net, with frequent power drops and long power failures. To overcome this issue, during the construction of the hotel, Paul developed an electricity and heating system using a gas turbine. One unit could power up the building, provide 9 tons of steam and thus take care of the hot water and heating system. Excess of steam was diverted to a small steam turbine generating more electricity. Due to the efficiency of the system the cost to generate power and heating turned out to be 30% lower than the state grid (KEB) provided power, including depreciation and maintenance of the installation. A backup power generator set took care of the downtime of the installation for repairs and maintenance.

Paul equipped several resorts with Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage (STES) using Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP) and boreholes. He cooperated with Shanghai university to make a few test holes to find out how many kW’s could be stored underground and the efficiency to retrieve the energy. Based on that for each building the number of boreholes was established and the heat pump capacity. For the past 8 years the systems have been operating well and the payback period, compared with air source heat pumps, has been less than 3 years. GSHPs are eco-friendly as these units are quiet and do not release any heat to the environment. Furthermore, Paul used thermal solar panels to boost the heat underground in Autumn to increase efficiency in winter. 

Located in hilly areas, the resorts Paul worked on use electric carts to transport people and goods within the car-free properties. With high demand on the batteries, provided by the cart companies, it was found that batteries generally only last one or two years, the recharging time was a minimum of 5 hours and in hot summer or could winter the performance of the batteries was much lower and therefore double the quantity of carts was needed. Paul remodeled the carts and equipped these with super-capacitors for mild sloped areas and introduced ultra-capacitors for steeper resorts. The recharging time of the capacitor module is less than 10 minutes, and the number of recharging times could be 20-30 years. The energy density is less than a battery (lead-acid, NiCad, Lithium-ion), but the lifetime is 20-30 times longer. From a sustainability point of view at least 90% of capacitor modules is recyclable. 

Structurally Insulated Panels (SIP) are widely used for prefabricated buildings; the insulation value is high, and the panels are relatively lightweight. In 2012 the first resort was built using Oriented Strand Board (OSB) on both sides of the SIP, but it was found after several years that the board started to absorb moisture and mildew and even showed some bending in floorboards. To avoid this problem, Paul designed the SIP’s using cement board on both sides. Although slightly heavier and easier to break, it solved the above problem. Now, 8 years later, the SIPs are in good state and should last for decennia.