Meeting/Event Information

Pius Kao, P.E. is a project manager at Affiliated Engineers with district energy experience at Stanford, Genentech, and UC Davis.  His responsibilities on these projects include campus distribution piping, building conversion from steam to Low Temperature Hot Water heating, and providing alternate source for existing process steam heating needs.  

Joanna Pyun, P.E. is a mechanical engineer for the Piping Group at Affiliated Engineers Incorporated (AEI). She has 8+ years of combined experience in construction, maintenance, and design. She has brought her design and field experience with utilities and power plant design at MIT, ASU, Genentech, and UC Davis to help clients meet greenhouse gas reduction targets and reduce maintenance costs through infrastructure overhauls and retrofits.  

While many regions in the US still burn natural gas to produce heat, California is leading the forefront on reducing carbon emissions by enacting legislation that requires a 40% reduction below 1990 GHG emission levels by 2030. Many heating distribution systems are transitioning from steam, which is produced by natural gas burning boilers, to hot water produced by electricity via heat recovery chillers or electric boilers. Steam production is not only a GHG heavy process, inefficient system, but it is also a costly system to maintain as steam and condensate are taxing on the pipe due to high temperatures and corrosive content.

A few years back AEI presented on the Stanford heat recovery chiller plant that significantly increased efficiency, reduced carbon emissions, and reduced potable water use.  This presentation is the complement of the heat recovery chilled water plant - Convert the Campus from Steam to Low Temperature Hot Water (LTHW) distribution, convert buildings from steam to LTHW heat exchanger, and provide alternate solutions for process steam.  We will look at the Stanford campus conversion and the in-progress design at UC Davis.

We will share the design and planning process of converting the distribution piping, including a synopsis of different pipe materials considered, hydraulic calculations, load evaluation, Campus regional heat exchangers, building heat exchanger design criteria, expected building dT, and replacement for process steam in buildings.