The Olympic Delivery Authority will only partly admit to its previous announcement to use ammonia to cool venues that due to their location cannot be catered for by the park’s big energy centre. Hence, the Aquatic Centre will make use of ammonia chillers, while the Olympic Stadium will use HFC technology.
The Aquatics Centre for London Olympics under construction
90% of the permanent cooling of the London Olympic site will be HFC-free, including:
- The Energy Centre will feature ammonia chillers: The new Energy Centre and network being built on the site will provide efficient and low-carbon power by using new technology including biomass boilers and a Combined Cooling Heat & Power plant to capture the heat generated as a by-product of electricity production. The Energy Centre will feature ammonia chillers. According to the “Sustainable design and construction update”, 2,250 tonnes in carbon will be saved per year due to the Combined Cooling Heat and Power (CCHP) plant.
- The Aquatics Centre will also feature an ammonia chiller: Being located too far from the energy centre to be catered for by it, the Aquatics Centre will make use of a separate ammonia chiller. The ODA had previously announced its decision to use natural refrigerants to cool the Aquatic Centre building, after receiving criticism last summer from the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 among others for its original plans to use HFCs for the purpose.
After this criticism, the ODA also announced to refrain from using HFCs for cooling the other venue located too far from the energy centre, namely the Olympic Stadium. However, it now turns out that HFC rather than ammonia chillers will be used for the purpose. “The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) said that because the Stadium may be reduced in size after the Games, that would have meant scrapping two of the proposed three ammonia chillers, leading to an environmental impact”, reports the RAC Magazine edition of January 2010.
The future of ammonia in the Olympics Games
ammonia21.com will be observing the use of R717 in large installations at the Olympic Games over the coming years. Coming next is an update on this year's Winter Olympics to be held on 12-28 February in Vancouver, Canada.
