Vienna Hilton
Vienna, Austria
When the Vienna Hilton, built in the 1970s, was recently renovated, speed-controlled pumps from Xylem Vogel Pumpen were installed. These state-of-the-art pumping systems are delivering significant cost savings in the operation of the hotel’s heating, air-conditioning, and water supply systems.
The Hilton hotel in Vienna has under gone a total refurbishment, requiring the building to be closed for one and a half years. The renewed hotel now has 579 modern guest rooms and 45 luxury suites. In addition, the Vienna Hilton can now also offer Austria’s biggest and newest hotel conference hall. This has an area of 830 square meters and can accommodate an audience of 900 people.
The hotel has retained its 423-square-meter ballroom and it can now offer an additional 11 other meeting rooms, ranging in size from 60 to 180 square meters. A brand new bar has been added, the gym expanded and the restaurant has been completely re-designed along ultra-modern lines. The works of several Austrian artists have been included in the interior designs.
Sate-of-the-Art Pumping
The total cost of the refurbishment was Euro 61 million. The renowned architect Hans Hollein was responsible for the design aspects and the overall construction contractor was Stadtpark Hotelreal AG, a company of Soravia Group. The required technical engineering, including electrical, heating, air-conditioning, ventilation and sanitary systems, was delivered by VA Tech Elin EBG. Xylem Vogel Pumpen delivered a total of 52 pumps and related equipment to the project; 34 pumps for heating, 12 for air conditioning and 6 for the hotel’s water supply.
Variable Speed Control
Twelve of the pumps supplied by Vogel to the Vienna Hilton were equipped with Xylem ‘Smart’ speed control system, Hydrovar. This provides major energy savings (50% to 70%) by enabling pumps to run at variable speeds. Hydrovar units use microprocessor technology to optimize pump performance. The units can be mounted on the pump itself and provide complete ‘plumb in and switch on’ capability.
Multi-pump systems
Another unique feature of the Hydrovar is its application in multi-pump systems. With the plumb in and pump principle, the only extra installation work is for each pump in the system to be connected with an interface cable to its neighbour and for the pumps to be named so that the micro processors can identify each pump. Hydrovar can be retrofitted to existing multi-pump systems and it can include the friction loss compensation system.
Advanced features
Another feature of the Hydrovar is what Manfred calls the inverse function. He explains that, “normally speed control systems depend on signals from sensors located on the discharge side of the pump. Hydrovar can also be programmed to respond to signals from a pick-up on the inlet side of the pump.” An example of where the inverse function might be used is in cooling water systems where the temperature of the incoming water would be a factor in the control of pump speed. This would enable flow through the heat exchanger to be increased to augment the cooling effect.