Arlington Heights, IL
Northwest Community Hospital, a growing suburban hospital, has a state of the art Central Utility Plant that was designed and built by Ballard Engineering. This plant received an ASHRAE Excellence in Engineering Award in 1998 for its innovative energy saving design. The Central Utility Plant consists of a 3.5 MW cogeneration facility, a high-pressure steam plant, and a chilled water plant. By centralizing all the utilities in one location, the hospital accrues significant energy savings as well as improved maintenance efficiency.
The cogeneration plant provides electricity for the hospital as well as 6000 lbs.//hr of high-pressure steam. The boiler system has heat recovery on the blowdown and stack economizers to further increase the efficiency. The chillers are a combination of high efficiency centrifugal chillers and an absorption chiller that uses the steam from the engine heat recovery.
