The administrative centre at Am Hoppenhof 33 in Paderborn is one of the two main pillars of Paderborn’s city administration – and, from the UHRIG Group’s perspective, a very special flagship project, as our technology is being used here directly!
The building complex (the former Nixdorf/Siemens property), comprising four striking office towers and with a gross floor area of around 26,700 sq m, was acquired and modernised by the City of Paderborn in 2016.
At Hoppenhof, Paderborn is marking a real milestone in its local heating transition: where large-scale gas boilers previously provided heating for the four office towers, the property is now being converted to climate-neutral wastewater heat.
Gebäudemanagement Paderborn (GMP) and the Paderborn Municipal Drainage Authority (STEB) have set up a system for this purpose, at the heart of which lies our in-house technology:
- Heat source: The municipal main sewer, located directly beneath the neighbouring Münsterstraße, is tapped into. Wastewater from large parts of the urban area flows continuously through this sewer to the sewage treatment works in Sande. Even when outside temperatures are freezing in winter, the temperature of the wastewater there practically never falls below 10°C (in summer it rises to between 18° and 19°C).
- Our UHRIG Therm-Liner: Our patented, bespoke Therm-Liner heat exchanger, made from V4A stainless steel, was installed on the sewer bed across an entire sewer section, spanning a length of 126 metres. The system is designed to deliver 600 kW of heating capacity and 861 kW of cooling capacity upstream of the heat pump.
- System design: The stainless steel modules are filled with a water-glycol mixture as the working fluid. The recovered environmental heat is transported via newly laid supply and return pipes running beneath Münsterstraße to the heating plant at Hoppenhof, which is equipped with large heat pumps.
Once the utility pipes have been laid and the heating plant installed at the administration building, the system will become fully operational, meaning that the four administration towers will be heated entirely without the use of fossil fuels with beginning of the 2027/28 heating season.
The project at Hoppenhof is regarded city-wide as a flagship example of Paderborn’s Climate Strategy 2035 and impressively demonstrates how existing sewer networks can contribute to urban decarbonisation in a minimally invasive and highly efficient manner!
#heat from wastewater #Therm-Liner #Paderborn #wastewater energy transfer (WET) #sewage energy exchange system (SEES) #energy from wastewater
