Refurbishment of industrial buildings

When a building is subject for refurbishment, there is a golden opportunity to change its behavior as an energy system. This paper shows the importance of careful investigations of the processes, the climate shield and the heating systems already present in the building before measures are implemented in reality. A case study is presented dealing with a carpentry factory. The building is poorly insulated according to standards today, and initially it was assumed that a better thermal shield would be of vital importance in order to reach optimal conditions. Instead, it is shown that the main problem is the ordinary heating system. This uses steam from a wood chips boiler and the wood chips come from the manufacturing processes. These wood chips are, therefore, a very cheap fuel. The boiler had, during decades of use, slowly degraded into a poor state. Hence, aero-tempers using expensive electricity have been installed to remedy the situation. These use not only expensive kWh but also very expensive kW due to the electricity tariff. It is shown that electricity for heating purposes must be abandoned and further, that this could be achieved at a surprisingly small cost. By stopping a large waste of steam, it was possible to find resources, in the form of unspent money, for further mending the existing heating system. Not only economy but also environmental hazards in the form of CO2 emissions urges us to abandon electricity and instead use heat from cheap biomass fired boilers. Such equipment saves environment at the same time it saves money. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.