SSC Semesterly Report: Campus Instructional Facility Geothermal (Part 2)
SSC received semester report for Fall 2021 for Campus Instructional Facility Geothermal (Part 2) on 1/19/2022. Please see attached.
SSC received semester report for Fall 2021 for Campus Instructional Facility Geothermal (Part 2) on 1/19/2022. Please see attached.
“In summary, there will be 2 slides taking turns to be displayed on the digital screen in CIF. The first slide is primarily composed of the 3D GSHP system schematic (Ground loops, heat pump and building) and the key parameters & features. The second slide shows the results from building energy modeling, including annual outdoor temperature variations, heating/cooing loads and other energy consumptions. This may [help] visualize the impact of CIF geothermal and give public a better understanding on the renewable resources.”
-John Zhao (11/14/2022)
PhD. Candidate
Research Assistant
Agricultural & Biological Engineering
Research field: Ground Source HVAC System/Subsurface Heat Transfer
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
John Zhao, PhD. Candidate, reached out to Dr. Stumpf with a question regarding the CIF's geothermal capacity. Specifically, the question was, "The description of this project https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project/geothermal-campus-instructional-facility-cif says:'The optimized geothermal exchange system will supply the CIF building with approximately 135 tons of heating and cooling capacity, equivalent to almost 65% of the total building energy demand.' I am checking if the GSHP only covers the 65% of the building space conditioning, or the heating/cooling account for 65% of the total electricity consumption (considering lighting, and etc.)?"
Dr Stumpf replied explaining that the 135 tons is 65% of the building's energy demand and the GSHPS (ground source heat pump) covers this portion. The GSHPS is primarily used to offset energy for making chilled water since the building is cooling dominated. The other 35% is for electricity (making hot water, running HVAC system, geothermal and water pumps, etc.)
Zhao met with Eric Vetter (in charge of the CIF) and got the following heat pump capacity information:
Manufacturer: ClimaCool Corporation
Cooling Capacity: 141 Ton / 1,692 MBH
Heating Capacity: 2,222 MBH
Electricity Input: At full capacity rated 100.4 - 144.3 kW.
SSC received the final report on Fall 2021 for Campus Instructional Facility Geothermal on 09/22/2021. Please see attached.
Part of the $25K fund 1‐304398, “602 SSC‐CIF Geothermal” for the CIF account is recognizing SSC’s $375K contribution to Geothermal in digital signage for a year at CIF.
The final draft of the digital signage is attached below.
The News-Gazette printed this story about the geothermal at the Campus Instructional Facility: https://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/university-illinois/renewable-en...
"URBANA — The University of Illinois’ glossy new building at Springfield Avenue and Wright Street represents the next step in its sustainability goals.
The four-story, 122,000- square-foot, $75 million Campus Instructional Facility is also the biggest geothermal installation on the UI campus.
Its geothermal system can pump 135 tons of hot or cool air into the building. That’s twice as much as the next biggest geothermal system on campus, and about 30 times the amount pumped into an average home.
“The whole world knows about solar and wind power and things like that — hydroelectric power, too — but that’s only the electric side of energy. Energy also includes heating and cooling,” said Morgan White, director of sustainability at UI Facilities & Services. “It’s truly transformative, because it’s moving into the phase of getting us clean thermal energy and not just clean electricity.”
Electricity provides heating and cooling as well, she said, but it’s primarily provided by natural gas, propane and other nonrenewable sources of energy.
The key to the geothermal endeavor? Forty boreholes dug into the Bardeen Quad next to Grainger Library. They’re 20 feet apart, 6 inches wide and drilled 450 feet deep.
Initially, the project required 60 boreholes, but UI researchers reduced that figure — and made the system financially feasible — by checking the thermal conductivity of different rock and soil layers, or the rate that heat passes through them, while considering the depth and flow rate of groundwater.
To keep the building temperate year-round, a mixture of water and glycol circulates from a heat pump in the mechanical room into a pipe that runs up and down the underground field of boreholes.
In winter, the pump pulls heat from the ground into the building. In summer, heat is pumped from the building back into the ground.
“It’s like when you have a bathtub that’s a little too hot or a little too cold, and you pour some water in and stir it up,” White said.
In all, the system reduces the building’s energy consumption by 65 percent compared to a typical heating/cooling installation, saving about $45,000 per year.
Student initiatives helped fund the state-of-the-art thermal system. The 18-member Student Sustainability Committee, funded by the annual “Green Fee” assessed on students, allocated $375,000 — or about 13 percent of the system’s cost — to the facility’s geothermal installation.
The building has a number of other unique features. It contains two dozen new classrooms — one of the highest figures on campus — replete with active-learning and distance-learning spaces. In the fall, engineering courses will occupy most of the space, along with math, statistics and other technical classes.
The facility is also the first UI building funded through a public-private partnership, which allows for tax-exempt financing.
Meanwhile, faculty and graduate students will use temperature information from a 385-foot-deep monitoring well, funded by Facilities & Services and the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment, for continued research opportunities.
As part of the Illinois Climate Action Plan, the university plans to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Currently, around 12 percent of electricity is provided by renewable sources, like the solar and wind farms near campus, White said. But only 4.5 percent of the UI’s total energy use, counting thermal, comes from renewable sources.
“Clean electricity is important, but it’s not enough,” White said.
In the planning stages, the UI wasn’t supposed to start implementing geothermal systems until 2035, but a suggestion by Yu-Feng Forrest Lin of the Prairie Research Institute jump-started that process."
The Campus Instructional Facility is substantially completed and will be open and ready for use in the fall semester. The new building at the southeast corner of Springfield Avenue and Wright Street offers state-of-theart spaces, including classrooms in the round and a “test kitchen” for instructional innovation, as well as cuttingedge technology, including smart glass technology to control incoming light and the largest geothermal energy system implemented so far at the university. Dr. Mohamed Attalla and others from F&S recently toured the new 122,000 square foot building that was constructed under the public-private partnership financing model. Aiming to inspire innovations and promote teamwork, the building will initially host engineering, math, and statistics classes; student career fairs; hack-a-thons; and other collaborations.
Morgan White with Facilities and Services, Sustainability, spoke with Stevie Jay and Diane Ducey on May 10, 2021 on ESPN radio 93.5. They discussed the new Campus Instructional Facility geothermal system, other clean energy projects on campus, and the local Geothermal Urbana-Champaign program.
Facilities & Services and the Prairie Research Institute are going to share CIF geothermal information with an ASHRAE research study, looking into long-term temperatures for ground heat exchangers and comparing measurements with models commonly used in the industry.
On May 10, 2021, Morgan White joined Stevie Jay Broadcasting to talk about renewable energy in the Champaign-Urbana community. In this 7 minute podcast, Morgan spoke about solar and geothermal energy initiatives by F&S and beyond!
Listen to the podcast in the attached files!
The largest geothermal energy system on campus came online last month at the Campus Instructional Facility, a $75M state-of-the-art building that will support transformative learning and teaching environments. The system has "enough capacity to handle the energy needed for approximately 30 American homes."
When built, the University of Illinois Campus Instructional Facility (CIF) will be a four-story building dedicated to academic and classroom use. CIF will serve 31,000 students daily and will leverage sustainable design to decrease its carbon emissions. The ground source heat exchange system will consist of approximately 60 wells arrayed under the John Bardeen Quad. It will be designed to be expandable, with the ability to be connected to other buildings, allowing for multiple phases. This SSC grant covers approximately 13% of the cost of the geothermal system, and this building project is the first public-private partnership on campus. As the campus works towards being carbon neutral by 2050, this project will not only reduce UIUC’s reliance on fossil fuels, but pave the way for new construction projects to use geothermal systems on campus.
The CIF Geothermal loop has a mixture of 30% glycol to 70% water.
In its March 2021 edition, the F&S Insider addressed two of UIUC's innovative sources of energy: Solar Farm 2.0 and Geothermal Energy. The story highlights the origin, installation, and wide array of benefits stemming from the projects.
To read this story in-depth, please see the attached file below.
On Wednesday 01/13/2021, at 1:00 pm, Andrew Stumpf, Clarence Odom, and their team will conduct geothermal DTS measurements during a site visit.
The SSC approved $9,318.16 in funding in Fall 2020 for a Living Lab Platform at the CIF. This project expires 12/16/2022.
Geothermal well drilling is underway for the Campus Instructional Facility project. As of 8/28, nine of 40 wells have been completed in compliance with the project stormwater pollution prevention plan (SWPPP).