When Wilson Blanchard, property managers of the high-rise office building at 25 Main St W in Hamilton, spoke with their leaseholders about tenant improvement, one of the areas of focus was humidification or lack thereof. The call for humidification was to reduce static electricity that can be detrimental to modern electronics. O’Dell was excited to deliver a solution that both addressed static AND created a healthier environment for tenants!
The entire building was ventilated using two hydronic air handling units located in the mechanical room. One for ventilating the interior zones/corridors and the other for the perimeter of each floor. The overall airflow in the building was 140,000 cfm and the total calculated required humidification load was 1,400 lbs/hr.
This load was too large for typical electric steam humidification solutions and would have required at least three (3) gas steam humidifiers to be installed to meet moisture load requirements. There was also a budget that had to be met.
The solution was a single in duct adiabatic high-pressure nozzle system which has the following advantages over typical humidification solutions
- Can handle large moisture requirements on a single system.
- Has the flexibility to be used in multiple air handling units without losing performances
- Energy saving of approximately $40,000.00/yr compared to standard electric steam and $10,000.00/yr compared to gas
- Extend Free cooling window with adiabatic cooling
- Delay chiller operation during shoulder seasons to avoid peak demand
Although the owner was simply looking for a solution to satisfy their tenants complaints regarding static electricity, by implementing a proper humidification system they also gave tenants a healthier working environment. Maintaining space relative humidity between 40-60%RH is proven to improve IAQ. The Sterling Chart provides a nice visual of the relationship between RH and the viability of virsus, bacteria and other harmful organisms.
