BARNSTABLE – A pilot project underway at the Old Colony Pumping Station in Hyannis is designed to save the town money in energy costs.
“We’re looking to try to recover the energy that’s created through the wastewater system at South Street,” Barnstable Town Manager Thomas Lynch said. “We’ll look and see whether this heat exchange will work to lower our costs for heating and cooling here in our town hall buildings.”
He estimated the pilot project will take about three months.
The Barnstable Wastewater Energy Recovery Project will determine whether it is economically feasible for the town to use an innovative system to supplement the energy needs of two nearby town buildings.
The pilot project is operated by the town’s Water Pollution Control division and is overseen by GHD, Inc., a local environmental engineering firm located in Hyannis.
Equipment installed at the station uses a heat exchange process called “wastewater energy recovery,” to take advantage of the relatively constant temperature of wastewater for space and water heating during the winter and to help cool buildings in the summer.
Heat exchange happens in a closed loop system between the wastewater and clean water, so the liquids do not come into contact with each other, according to information about the equipment provided by the town.
The wastewater energy recovery system being piloted is the Huber RoWin unit.
The way the system works is a portion of the wastewater flow at the pumping station is taken from the force main and screened to remove the majority of the solids that may be present in the wastewater.
Flow passes through the system equipment where the heat exchange process occurs and back to the pumping station by gravity.
If the project is deemed feasible, the energy produced will supplement the heating and cooling needs of Barnstable Town Hall and the School Administration Building.
The Old Colony Pumping Station was chosen to test the technology because of its proximity to those two large town buildings, which have a great deal of heating and cooling demands.
“In the summer, you’re able to use this energy as part of a cooling system and in the winter it can be used as a heating system,” Lynch said.
While the heat exchange process is well established, the pilot project will assess how well the unit works with raw wastewater and what type of maintenance is needed to run the system, according to information sheet from the town’s Department of Public Works.
If the project is successful, a permanent wastewater water energy recovery unit installed within a building “could provide a heat sink to improve cooling efficiency of the building chillers and also to potentially eliminate the cooling towers on the building,” according to information provided by the town’s Energy Coordinator Richard Elrick.
The town was awarded a one hundred percent grant from the state Department of Energy Resources’ Wastewater Energy Recovery Assistance Program to pay for the pilot project.
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