ASHRAE St. Louis Chapter Annual TEGA Awards
Congratulations to the 2012 St Louis Chapter TEGA Award winners Jim Rosick and Erik Eaves with Burns & McDonnell, Kirk Mescher with CM Engineering, and Gerry Williams with Cannon Design.
Jim Rosick with Burns & McDonnell had two projects this year up for awards and won 1st place with both projects in their respective categories. His project with Lambert International Airport won 1st place in the Public Assembly category. The project replaced constant volume, dual-duct air handling units installed in the 1970s with units utilizing VFDs, fan arrays, and custom terminal units. Jim’s project with the University of Missouri won 1st place for Existing Institutional Building. That project installed a 1,500 ton, steam turbine-driven, centrifugal chiller in one of the university’s primary chilled water plants. Jim used a 3D laser scan in order to create a 3D rendering of the facility to minimize the interference with pipe runs. This project is believed to be the first steam turbine centrifugal chiller installed in Missouri.
Erik Eaves, also with Burns & McDonnell, won 1st place in the Existing Commercial Buildings category for his project with Elantas at their PDG Laboratory in St Louis. The gut rehab of this 45,000 sqft, 100 year old building featured a 400 ton chiller plant on the roof utilizing variable speed pumps, a custom air handling unit with variable speed fans, a dual stack plume exhaust system for the laboratory, VAV boxes, and a laboratory air control system. The highlight of this project was the use of a heat recovery loop to claim would-be lost heat from the laboratory exhaust.
Gerry Williams with Cannon Design won 1st place in the category of Alternative and/or Renewable Energy Use with his project at the Linde + Robinson Institute for Environmental Research at the California Institute for Technology. Caltech needed to reduce their energy consumption associated with cooling their lab equipment so they turned to Cannon Design for help. Using the company’s very own invention, Gerry was able to provide a significant reduction in energy use. Cannon’s product, compared to tradition methods, delivers incredibly efficient cooling to major lab equipment requiring higher pressures, larger flow rates and precise temperature control. Cannon’s product is capable of controlling temperature down to 0.1 degrees Celsius.
Kirk Mescher with CM Engineering won 2nd place for Existing Institutional Buildings. His project with Washington Elementary School in Belvidere, Illinois had only a 60 day construction schedule to fully renovate the mechanical system for the 95,000 sqft school originally built in the 1960s. Before this project began, the school only had steam ventilators for heat, no cooling, and many outdoor air dampers in disrepair. By the first day of school only months later, the building had a ground source heat pump loop and a ventilation system delivering fresh air while utilizing energy recovery. The ventilation system was even more efficient still, as fresh air was only introduced based on building occupancy and CO2 concentrations.
Again, congratulations to this year’s TEGA Award winners. Each engineer and client will be given a plaque at the April lunch meeting in honor of their achievements.
