Hotel HVAC Filtration Provides More Efficient Comfort Cooling
Posted by William Vander Plaats on Thu, Jan 14, 2010 @ 02:27 PM
A recent report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicates that hotels and restaurants account for approximately 15% of all commercial water use in the U.S. today. And of that 15%, the water used for cooling and heating accounts for about 11% (see chart). That is a tremendous amount of water.
In addition, the amount of energy used to pump that water can be very large. In fact, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are often the largest electricity users in hotels, accounting for 30% or more of total costs.
So by making sure the HVAC system is operating efficiently, hotel managers can lower the costs of hotel operation by minimizing both water AND energy usage. Filtration can help to accomplish that, and the amount of savings to be expected can be determined by using an Energy and Water Savings Calculator.
Specific Filtration Solutions
The specific ways in which filtration can typically improve the total system efficiency include:
Through either method, proper filtration can prevent the accumulation of dirt and other solids. And that keeps all the system components operating at their highest efficiency.
Poor choices for filtration (such as having no filtration at all) can lead to a variety of problems for building owners as well as guests, up to and including
death from things such as Legionnaire's Disease.
On the other hand, the benefits of effective filtration include:
Energy managers for large hotel chains have learned from experience that the expense to
retrofit an existing installation will often pay for itself in a short amount of time. Just by making sure the heat exchanger is operating at its highest efficiency, hotels can realize huge
energy savings. A large number of
prominent hotels have chosen LAKOS Filtration Systems to make their comfort cooling as efficient as possible
Recent Case Study: The Hilton Garden Inn Hotel near Chicago's O'Hare Airport is an excellent example how a properly selected retrofit filtration system can pay for itself very quickly. After years of disappointing results, a new system was put in place using improved installation techniques and
energy-saving centrifugal separators. A little bit of filtration was good, but a well-designed and correctly sized filtration system was even better.
Want to learn more? Download the complete
Hilton Garden Hotel Case Study and read more about how an effective filtration system helped them save energy and conserve water.