Sustainable heating and cooling systems for retrofit seminar

The seminar focused on how new heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) technologies can increase the sustainability of heating and cooling systems in buildings.

Presentations incorporated practical applications, market ready solutions and case studies to demonstrate how different technologies can be best used for different types of buildings.

The morning started with a presentation by Marco Marengo, Professor of Engineering at the University of Brighton, who introduced the meaning of sustainable HVAC before focusing on CHP and heat pump systems and their economic feasibility in the UK. This was followed by a presentation from Marco Romani, a guest academic speaker from the University of Brighton, who spoke about the planning, management and verification of CHP performance.

An overview of the possible uses of heat pumps was presented by Robin Curtis, GSHP (Ground Source Heat Pump) Specialist at GeoScience. Robin gave examples of the application of heat pumps in buildings, from the very small to the very large, with a focus on ground source, but also touched on air and water sources.

Tessa Guy, Director of Baystar Energy Efficient Systems, then gave an analysis of the financial feasibility of heat pumps and concluded the seminar with a tour of the Roffey Park site and its heat pump project.

This seminar was created in collaboration with Baystar Energy and the university's Green Growth Platform, and was hosted at the Roffey Park Institute.

If you have an idea that you would like to put forward for our Insights seminars, please contact Susannah Davidson at S.L.Davidson@brighton.ac.uk.