Somerset House — Bespoke Adiabatic Coolers for New CHP System

Somerset House is a famous London landmark located on the Strand in central London, overlooking the banks of the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The building was designed by Sir William Chambers in 1776 originally to serve as a Tudor palace.

Since the 1990s Somerset House has undergone a series of changes in use, with a number of restaurants and art galleries moving in to replace the government offices that once resided there. The Somerset House trust discovered that one of the bottlenecks to their expansion was the 40-year-old heating system and ancient electrical infrastructure, and in order to maintain revenue growth, the decision was made to upgrade.

HC Coils supplied 7 Dry Air Cooler units, which were able to take temperatures down from 35 to 27°C even in the heights of summer, using our Adiabatic Cooling system design. The main challenge we faced was designing the units to suit the installation in this Grade I listed building.

A further issue we had to overcome was that the units needed to adhere to strict noise level criteria due to their proximity to restaurants. Most of the units were approx 1.7 × 3m blocks and needed to be fitted into individual light wells. The units were manoeuvred into position, by the installation contractors, with cranes at midnight. This avoided any congestion issues in central London. They were then carefully lowered into their final installation positions under artificial light.

One of the other major issues with this installation was that the third-party absorption chillers couldn't accept any form of antifreeze. HC Coils found a solution to this problem by installing a 3 kW immersion heater on each unit. These are activated in low ambient temperatures to provide year-round frost protection. We pride ourselves in our innovative engineering approach to fixing customer problems and this was no exception.