‘District heating and cooling’ — I

The subject topic, as covered in Business Recorder (BR) article (March 9), in quite some detail may be misleading to many facilities’ managers in Pakistan where concept of health requirements and associated energy efficiency and economy do not exist when it comes to air-conditioning installations.

For those of us who are following this technology for more than half a century (first recorded in District Cooling installation in Hartford, Connecticut, the USA), there have been some installations in Pakistan based on this concept in the 1960s such as Institute in Nilore where our design covered a number of buildings fed from the then largest central air-conditioning plant to take advantage of load diversity and better central plant operation supervision. This concept is still valid for large group of buildings and gated communities and this writer has had many “Letters to the Editor” published in BR on this subject over the years!

However, to stretch this concept to large city centres in Pakistan is not practical due to the enormous failure of our sewage/drainage system which would ensure early damage to long lengths of insulated service piping and thus total system failure.

(To be continued tomorrow)

Engr. Ainul Abedin Karachi

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021