The cafe unit on the ground floor generates significant heat from its kitchen; cooker, fryer, hob. Typically the temperature gets to 25-30 degrees at ceiling level. The cafe has extraction to get rid of this air which is constantly on when the cafe is open. The heat is created through cooking which costs money and the cafe spends more money to expel the hot air and it’s literally throwing money away. What we are trying to achieve in this project is to show that this hot air can be reused as a heat source for the cafe as well as the apartments above.
The overall aim of this project is to reduce energy consumption in the cafe and in the apartments by capturing the kitchen heat which is the by-product of the cooking process. This will achieve two things, reduce the heat in the kitchen making it a more pleasant working environment and reduce the overall energy consumption of the building users.
The idea is to install a heat exchanger to capture the excess kitchen heat, use it to heat fresh air and transfer it to the cafe and apartments.
For more on the Limerick Energy Model click https://citizeninnovationlab.ie/tools/limerick-energy-model/