Geothermal Energy Project

In an endeavor to move away from environmentally unfriendly emissions caused by Missouri S&T's Power Plant, a geothermal system using state-of-the-art chillers/heaters is being constructed to support the campus demand for heating and cooling while allowing the University to achieve energy savings and accomplish a reduction in deferred maintenance backlog.

Constructed in 1945, the Power Plant for the University currently provides steam generated heat using three coal/woodchip fueled boilers to various facilities throughout campus. The newest boiler installed in 1981 is a vintage coal and woodchip fueled boiler. The two remaining boilers are older coal fired stoker units that are inefficient and have limited pollution controls.

In 2010, University personnel along with the consulting team of CM Engineering and McClure Engineering began a study to replace the current steam infrastructure with a ground source heating system and to determine the impact it would have on the campus infrastructure. The study assessed placement for a piping loop and well fields along with current building system condition and makeup for such a change. After completion, the study suggested that a geothermal system could replace the aging steam plant, which currently serves 65 percent of the campus square footage, as the primary heating source on campus and provide significant energy savings. The geothermal system would be a ground source heat pump system which requires a balanced heating and cooling demand for long term stable operation. Since the campus is cooling dominant, the geothermal system will be designed to meet the heating load. The existing chilled water system would be improved to provide a supplemental cooling source to complement the geothermal system. This will allow the University to achieve energy savings and accomplish a reduction in deferred maintenance costs.

Campus Improvements

The project includes the installation of ground source heat pump chilllers, construction of a geothermal loop, construction of well fields, and required modifications to building HVAC systems. This project will create three geothermal regional plants. The regional plants will be located in McNutt, Emerson, and the New Chemical and Biological Engineering buildings. Future regional plants include Toomey, Bullman Multi-Purpose, Interdisciplinary Engineering, and Residential College.

These plants will contain screw type heat recovery chillers and serve adjacent buildings with heating water through a new heating hot water distribution system. Supplemental boilers will be installed in the regional plant to provide first cost savings, peak load energy savings, balance of loads to the geothermal wells, and flexibility of energy usage. The heat recovery chillers will also be connected to the chilled water distribution system to provide the base cooling source. The chilled water distribution system will be modified and upgraded into a two pipe system. The system will reuse the existing electric chillers and cooling towers located on campus.

The benefits of regional plants include less equipment to maintain, running geothermal water only to the regional plants, longer equipment life of screw chillers compared to modular type, and taking advantage of load diversity between buildings.

To reduce piping costs and simplify phasing and growth of the geothermal campus system, each regional plant will be tied to a dedicated well field. (The well fields will not be connected to each other now, but the University will have the option to connect them at a later date.) The well fields will be sized to optimize the payback from utility cost savings.

Buildings that are not in the scope of the geothermal heating system under this project that currently receive steam from the power plant will be retrofitted with dedicated steam boilers until those buildings can be added to the future geothermal plants. This will be accomplished under a separate project.