Previous work: Wastewater heat recovery assessment: Student accommodation

Completed by Dr Madhu Murali

Background
St Mary’s is a student residential housing complex in Bangor, Wales.

Challenge
St. Mary’s has the capacity to house around 600 students and consumes up to 60,000 litres of litres of water during the teaching term. Heating costs for this quantity of water are significant and currently produce a significant amount of carbon emissions. The University would like to reduce these costs and carbon emissions in line with their policy on sustainability.

Solution
Temperature monitoring between February and April 2022 at the final sewer manhole at St. Mary’s found that there is a significant temperature resource available in the wastewater leaving the site. On average, the temperature of the wastewater was found to be 17.1°C, with peak hourly average temperatures of 19.7°C during peak consumption times. This is significantly higher than the average cold water temperature for the same period, around 8-12°C. Utilising this heat through wastewater heat recovery to pre-heat the incoming cold water through a heat exchanger or heat pump offers a significant opportunity to reduce heating costs at St. Mary’s.

Benefits
We were able to propose a wastewater heat recovery project that could provide a significant offset of cost and carbon emissions to the water heating costs incurred on site at St. Mary’s.

Wastewater heat recovery

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