GERMANY: Johnson Controls has supplied a 700kW Sabroe ammonia heat pump to the Berlin-Buch, CHP plant in Berlin, operated by Vattenfall Europe Wärme AG.

The CHP plant uses a heat recovery boiler to capture waste heat from an existing gas turbine to generate heat for the local district heating network. The addition of the Sabroe HeatPAC 104SV heat pump with single-stage reciprocating compressor will boost the plant’s district heating capacity.

In Berlin, Vattenfall operates the largest urban heating network in Western Europe with around 1.3 million connected residential units. A total of 2,000km of pipelines supplies the connected properties with 80 to 135°C hot water which provides heating and hot water to connected residences. The Buch island network in the north of Berlin supplies a total of around 10,000 apartments and 500 individual facilities.

“This project puts the power of heat pumps to work to meet energy needs while cutting waste, emissions and costs. Importantly heat pumps deliver required heating without the need for additional gas supplies,” said Dave Dorney, vice president & general manager industrial refrigeration at Johnson Controls. 

The degree of fuel utilisation for the entire CHP process at Buch is said to be around 90%. In addition, the Buch thermal power station uses the waste heat from the landfill gas generation from the Schwanebeck landfill in Nauen, 60km west of Buch, and thus covers up to 20% of the district heating requirement for the Buch heating network.

Sabroe HeatPAC units are based on the Sabroe HPO/HPC/HPX high-pressure reciprocating compressors achieving up to 40bar differential pressures and up to 60bar design pressures. Using ammonia as refrigerant, Sabroe HeatPACs provide hot water at up to 90°C. At Vattenfall, the Sabroe unit is operating with a COP of 6.5.