Los Angeles Southwest College- Central Plant Retrofit and Upgrade
PROJECT FEATURES
910-Ton chiller, 29-000 BTU cooling tower, (3) 100-HP condenser water pumps, 10-HP and 3-HP chilled water pumps, 100-gallon expansion tank, refrigerant purge exhaust fan.
SERVICES
Goss was the mechanical and electrical engineer-of-record.
CENTRAL PLANT CAPACITY
2,730-Tons
OWNER
Los Angeles Community College District
DESCRIPTION
Goss Engineering served as the mechanical and electrical engineer of record for this DSA-approved central plant upgrade. The project began with an assessment of the condenser water system where the pumps were cavitating and the system deficiencies were causing repeated equipment failures. Our findings indicated that the original cooling towers were undersized and the piping was not optimally configured.
Using the recommendations from our report and approval from the client, we designed for the implementation of the recommended solutions. The final design included the addition of a new cooling tower, the replacement of the condenser water pumps, and the replacement of all condenser water piping between the cooling towers and the old condenser water pump location. New VFDs were added to serve the new cooling tower fans and condenser water pumps.
During the course of the project, the client identified a new building coming online requiring an increase in central plant cooling capacity. As such, we added a third chiller, capable of serving the ice TES system and increased campus cooling loads, and made the associated controls upgrade.
In addition to these changes, we added a supplemental pump to allow minimal nighttime cooling loads around campus to be served by the central plant at the same time ice was being produced in the TES system, offering the greatest flexibility for the central plant operators. We also added a chilled water expansion tank since no tank had ever been installed, and upgraded the refrigerant monitoring system to the current code.
