The ICE’s One Great George Street building is used all-year round as a conference and wedding venue. However, in order to make it more accessible to larger groups of people, the main reception rooms’ capacity needed to increase, along with the installation of a new commercial kitchen.
To achieve the new capacity, it was essential to improve the ducted air systems to allow higher volumes and air changes throughout the space. In addition to this challenge, the entire project needed to be completed within a working week, between two busy weekends of events.
The AHU supplying the building’s kitchen was a well maintained 20-year old unit with a belt driven centrifugal fan providing approximately 1.5 m3/s, while the extract unit comprised twin axial fans drawing approximately 2 m3/s. FläktGroup successfully removed the centrifugal supply fan and replaced it with a 071 CENTRIFLOW Plus PM plug fan, complete with an inverter-driven 11kW permanent magnet motor which generates an impressive 5.0 m3/s at 1,000Pa.
Furthermore, the inline extract axial fans were replaced by a fan box with the same size plug fan and motor, which was designed to provide 5.5 m3/s and the correct negative pressure levels.
Our Service Sales Engineer at FläktGroup, added: “We used modern plug fan technology to significantly increase the duty – that’s both the volume and pressure – of the air being supplied through the equipment. This resulted in a gross increase in duty of 3.5 m3/s in both supply and extract, ensuring that ICE achieved their goals.”
Direct driven CENTRIFLOW Plus PM plug fans with permanent magnet motor (PM-motor) are available in seven sizes, with airflows up to 3.5 m3/s and pressure rises up to 1,800 Pa.
Phil Ackers, Head of Building Services at ICE, explained: “We always knew it was going to be a challenge to increase the supply and extract into the kitchens, especially as there was very limited space within the existing plant room and the ductwork could not be increased in size without extensive and costly building work. With the added pressure of a very tight deadline that could not be exceeded, it was shaping up to be difficult project.The proposal from FläktGroup was ingenious and cost effective. Their solution enabled us to minimise the downtime in the kitchen and significantly improve the environmental conditions, all at a fraction of the expense of a more conventional solution. Plus, the work was completed on time and on budget with minimal fuss – I’ll certainly be using them again. "
