The heat and cold for the new sports centre come from 1 machine. Which machine is that?
“This is our cooling and heating system. It is a large heat pump that allows us to heat all the rooms in the entire sports centre. From the sports halls and swimming pools to the showers and catering facilities. The system is also used to make ice for the indoor ice skating rink and hockey hall.”
How does 1 system simultaneously provide ice-cold skating rinks and warm swimming water?
“The cooling system in the machine room uses ammonia as a refrigerant. This is a natural refrigerant that contains a lot of energy. And the more energy it contains, the more capacity you can get out of it. The ammonia cooling system allows us to cool liquid CO2 to -12˚C in a large tank. We then pump the ice-cold CO2 through cooling pipes to the ice rinks. There, the CO2 gives off cold to the concrete floor on which the ice is placed. After this cold release, the CO2 goes back into the cooling system, making it ice-cold again.
Cooling is about extracting heat from something that can be reused elsewhere. Because the ammonia in the cooling system contains a lot of energy (heat), we capture it with a heat exchanger and use it to heat water. We then pump this hot water everywhere, including the swimming pool. This way you can skate and swim with just 1 machine.”
Does this mean that all the energy flows in the sports centre are interconnected?
“That’s right. In the renovated sports centre, we can reuse all the heat extracted by the cooling system. Previously, the residual heat from the cooling system was released to the outside air through condensers. But now that energy is sacred and expensive, we looked for smarter solutions and the recovery of residual heat. With the introduction of the heat pump, heat generation is much more environmentally friendly. After all, there is no need to burn gas. As a result, the gas connection could be removed. If we have too little residual heat from the cooling system, we can extract heat from the outside air and use it with the heat pump.”
The ice floor for the hockey rink is being laid this month. What does it take to build such an ice rink?
“The hockey rink is 30 by 60 metres. There is an impressive amount of piping in the floor. Every 10 centimetres, there is a pipe running back and forth along the entire length of the rink. That adds up to no less than 18 kilometres of cooling pipes! All the cooling pipes are welded together by hand. We count around 2.500 welds. Just before Christmas, the concrete floor was poured over the cooling pipes. This was done in 1 day to avoid cracking. The concrete floor was then painted white and the logos and lines of the hockey rink were applied, which will soon be visible through the ice.
As the temperature of the concrete floor is always below 0˚C, rising groundwater can form an icicle under the floor and push up the ice rink. To prevent this, underfloor heating was installed under the concrete floor. This keeps the ice rink flat at all times and at a good level. In the spring of 2025, the ice masters will spray water on the concrete floor. They then build up the ice layer by layer using a mop machine. The result will be a beautiful 3 centimetre thick ice rink.”
Did Equans already have experience in building ice rinks?
“Certainly, in addition to several hockey rinks, we also built the De Meent ice rink in Alkmaar, the Ireen Wüst ice rink in Tilburg, the ice floor for the musical De Tocht, and temporary ice rinks on the Museumplein in Amsterdam. That is why we offered our services to SPIE, responsible for all the structural installations in the sports centre. They were so impressed by our knowledge and expertise that they happily outsourced the cooling and heating technology for this sports centre to us. My job is to coordinate all the work and guarantee quality. It is an incredibly cool job in which cooperation works perfectly. In the spring of 2025, the first visitors will be skating on the ice that we have cooled. That will also be the starting point for using residual heat from the cooling system to heat 26 million litres of water for the competition pool. I am looking forward to that.”
