The Science and Engineering Building spans 10 levels provides 24,500 square metres of state-of-the-art teaching and research space and is designed to share facilities with the adjacent Hilmer Building.
The environmentally-sustainable design initiatives include the addition of photovoltaic cells, a highly efficient building plant and equipment, high-performance glazing and the use of bore water for non-potable requirements are to be included.
- Location:UNSW Kensington Campus
- Client:Multiplex
- Industry:Education
What we did
Supply AQUAZONE 3000 litre Buffer Tank, Optivent Air & Dirt Separator and of course the complete ECW filtration system. The filtration system consisted of Screen filtration to 100 micron, bag filters to filter down to 5 micron, and then UV sterilisation to remove micro-organisms and bacteria.
Challengers that we faced were:
A custom design was needed for the filtration system for the RO plant. Certain parameters included filtration levels down to x micron and various stages of pre-treatment filtration. Primary filtration consisted of screen filters which flowed through to bag filters and finally to UV.
Delivering Equipment Cooling Water
Equipment cooling water (ECW) is often delivered via a single pass system utilising non-potable water that has been used elsewhere in the plant. However, depending on the type of equipment and the internal tolerances a single pass system is not always suitable.
Improving building efficiency with a centralised ECW plant
To improve building efficiency, the engineers on the UNSW Science and Engineering Building designed a central ECW plant to recirculate and filter water on site. They asked Masterflow to provide a system that would deliver on their requirements for highly filtered water.
Reverse osmosis (RO) filtration is ideal in some applications but returns water to its purest highly acidic form. Acidic water behaves like a solvent and leaches minerals from pipework. Copper pipes are particularly vulnerable, so an RO filtration system requires stainless steel or high-grade PE pipes throughout, plus additional pumping equipment to generate sufficient pressure across the system.
The outcome
The AQUAZONE 3000 litre Buffer Tank was pre-insulated and cladded in stainless steel thereby saving the Contractor on site the costly outlay of performing this on site.
The filtration system was designed by the Masterflow engineering team to meet the specifications of the consultant whilst still minimising the overall pressure loss.
This eliminated the requirement to upgrade or add additional pumps into the system. It also was the most efficient method of reusing existing but wastewater at the UNSW, thereby reducing overall costs to the University.