Published in the Antarctic Sun
Scientists who study gases mostly confine them to flasks in laboratories. Not Stephen Warren and Von P. Walden, atmospheric researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle. They are studying the air out on the polar plateau.
Away from the sterile, controlled environments of indoor research facilities, Warren and Walden have created their own work site right next to the Clean Air Sector. The project is called SPARCLE, the South Pole Atmospheric Radiation and Cloud Lidar Experiment.
“We’re studying processes important for climate,” Warren said. In 1985, Warren began examining how sunlight reflecting off snow affects the energy budget of Antarctica. An significant reason for the extreme cold of Antarctica is that snow reflects 83 percent of the incoming solar energy. Warren also looked at the sizes and shapes of the snow crystals themselves to learn why snow reflects sunlight the way it does.
Walden studied the other half of the energy budget, measuring the amount of infrared energy emitted by the different gases in the air, as well as by clouds. He found that even the small amount of water vapor over the plateau was responsible for two-thirds of the natural greenhouse effect here, and carbon dioxide was responsible for most of the rest.
Now they are combining their efforts in a two-pronged attack on a tough problem.
“The most important greenhouse gas, worldwide, is water vapor,” Warren said. But nobody has accurately measured how much infrared energy it is capable of absorbing at low temperatures.
This information is vital for predictions of climate change not just in Antarctica but around the world.
And conditions on the ground at the South Pole, with temperatures dropping to minus 120 F, are similar to those at high altitude, in the upper troposphere, elsewhere in the world.
Learning more about the interactions between water vapor and infrared energy helps make climate-change models more accurate. While many causes contribute to climate change,
Warren said, they come back to one place.
“They either start with radiation or involve radiation,” he said.
The team, including graduate student Penny Rowe and research meteorologist Richard Brandt,
has devised two different ways to look at water vapor.
One is using the flat expanse of the polar plateau to provide a long path of uniform air. They have an instrument that reports how much infrared energy is absorbed by water vapor in the air. But it can be reconfigured to measure how much infrared energy is emitted by the atmosphere.
Water vapor’s absorption, Walden said, is weak in parts of the infrared spectrum. So to measure it accurately requires a lot of water vapor in the air. At high temperatures, it’s easy to get lots of water vapor in a small chamber in a laboratory. But such high-temperature measurements
may not be applicable to the cold upper troposphere. At low temperatures, the only way to get sufficient water vapor is with a long distance, more than half a mile, of air. Because the plateau is featureless, the air moving across it is usually fairly uniform in terms of wind speed and direction, humidity and temperature.
The other way the team is measuring the characteristics of water vapor is with a tethered balloon. They can send different instruments up with the balloon, to more than a mile high,
and photograph ice crystals and measure humidity and temperature. Most of the water vapor in the atmosphere is in the lowest mile of air.
The tethered balloon also allows the team to take sustained measurements at fixed altitudes, which is uncommon. Usually this type of research is done from freely rising balloons or from
airplanes, which move quickly through clouds and also may alter the cloud properties.
Their observations are compared with existing models of the atmosphere and its characteristics. In collaboration with other climate modelers, the team’s new data can be incorporated into improved concepts of the climate.
The information is also useful for interpreting data from satellites and other remote-sensing devices. The devices can record observations, but to interpret that information requires a
knowledge of the processes involved, including how gases absorb radiation.
But Warren and Walden can’t observe everything at once. To complete their descriptions of atmospheric conditions, they collaborate with NASA, NOAA and local weather observers.
This summer’s research is largely a testing phase. Much of the real work will happen next summer and over the following winter of 2001. Two members of the group will winter at the
South Pole to conduct the research, which uses existing tools in new ways.
One of the instruments was originally designed to measure pollutants coming out of factory smokestacks. Now it’s in use measuring water vapor in Antarctic air.
“We’re using new technology to increase our understanding of the Antarctic continent to make better predictions of climate for this region,” said Walden.
Sunday, January 16, 2000
Sunday, January 9, 2000
Tropical trekkers reach South Pole
Published in the Antarctic Sun
The first Singaporean expedition to Antarctica reached the Pole New Year’s Eve, after 57 days of sledging. The team, none of whom had ever skied before, traveled nearly 700 miles from Horseshoe Valley just north of Patriot Hills.
“It’s an extra challenge for Singapore,” said team member David Lim. The small southeast Asian country is in the tropics. Its highest natural point is only 500 feet above sea level.
“We have a little extra gap to bridge,” Lim said.
Last year several members of the group climbed Mount Everest, which caused a national sensation in the tiny city-state.
The public interest and available sponsorship dollars convinced the team to attempt a ski and sledge journey from 80 degrees south to the South Pole.
The planning began shortly after they returned from Everest, in May 1998. “We rested for one or two months, and got restless again,” said team member Khoo Swee Chiow.
In July 1998, they began preparation. In May 1999, they trained with British polar adventurer Roger Mear in Greenland.
“We didn’t know how to sledge,” Lim said. “And we had zero skiing ability.”
From that dubious beginning in Greenland to a second training trip in New Zealand in July, they felt prepared, but Antarctica still offered a challenge.
The first trial was arriving on the continent. Weather kept them in Punta Arenas, Chile, for nine days beyond their intended departure date. During that time, they met some others involved in Antarctic expeditions this year: the British and Australian team whose leaky fuel ruined their chances of a continental traverse.
They finally began their journey from 80 degrees south on November 4. Antarctica was just introducing itself.
“Most of us here have not been to this kind of cold,” said Khoo, a software engineer with Singapore Airlines. The team endured cold reaching minus 67 F, and a 46 mph headwind.
At 87 degrees south, they hit bad weather that forced them to hunker down for two days, the longest delay of the trip.
“Eighty-seven to 88, that was like the South Pole putting up her last defense,” Khoo said.
On the plateau before reaching the Pole, they met the British-sponsored “Last Degree” team who were skiing from 89 degrees south to the Pole.
The Singaporean prime minister is their primary patron, encouraging their mission “to promote the spirit of adventure in Singaporean youth,” said expeditioner Ang Yan Choon.
They left the Pole in a private Twin Otter operated by Adventure Network International on January 3. But a number of items would remain in the ANI cache at the Pole.
“Anything that’s edible or usable we’ll leave here for others,” Choon said.
The team will travel back to Singapore via Chile and New York. Their next adventure destination is uncertain at the moment, though the team all smiled when they thought of a “next time.”
“The world is pretty big,” Lim said.
The first Singaporean expedition to Antarctica reached the Pole New Year’s Eve, after 57 days of sledging. The team, none of whom had ever skied before, traveled nearly 700 miles from Horseshoe Valley just north of Patriot Hills.
“It’s an extra challenge for Singapore,” said team member David Lim. The small southeast Asian country is in the tropics. Its highest natural point is only 500 feet above sea level.
“We have a little extra gap to bridge,” Lim said.
Last year several members of the group climbed Mount Everest, which caused a national sensation in the tiny city-state.
The public interest and available sponsorship dollars convinced the team to attempt a ski and sledge journey from 80 degrees south to the South Pole.
The planning began shortly after they returned from Everest, in May 1998. “We rested for one or two months, and got restless again,” said team member Khoo Swee Chiow.
In July 1998, they began preparation. In May 1999, they trained with British polar adventurer Roger Mear in Greenland.
“We didn’t know how to sledge,” Lim said. “And we had zero skiing ability.”
From that dubious beginning in Greenland to a second training trip in New Zealand in July, they felt prepared, but Antarctica still offered a challenge.
The first trial was arriving on the continent. Weather kept them in Punta Arenas, Chile, for nine days beyond their intended departure date. During that time, they met some others involved in Antarctic expeditions this year: the British and Australian team whose leaky fuel ruined their chances of a continental traverse.
They finally began their journey from 80 degrees south on November 4. Antarctica was just introducing itself.
“Most of us here have not been to this kind of cold,” said Khoo, a software engineer with Singapore Airlines. The team endured cold reaching minus 67 F, and a 46 mph headwind.
At 87 degrees south, they hit bad weather that forced them to hunker down for two days, the longest delay of the trip.
“Eighty-seven to 88, that was like the South Pole putting up her last defense,” Khoo said.
On the plateau before reaching the Pole, they met the British-sponsored “Last Degree” team who were skiing from 89 degrees south to the Pole.
The Singaporean prime minister is their primary patron, encouraging their mission “to promote the spirit of adventure in Singaporean youth,” said expeditioner Ang Yan Choon.
They left the Pole in a private Twin Otter operated by Adventure Network International on January 3. But a number of items would remain in the ANI cache at the Pole.
“Anything that’s edible or usable we’ll leave here for others,” Choon said.
The team will travel back to Singapore via Chile and New York. Their next adventure destination is uncertain at the moment, though the team all smiled when they thought of a “next time.”
“The world is pretty big,” Lim said.
The pull of the Pole
Published in the Antarctic Sun
At South Pole Station, in the middle of the polar plateau, people keep showing up. While most fly here on LC-130s, there are a growing number who can say they got here by land.
Just the other day, seven men in bright orange jackets appeared outside the station. They were Argentinians who had driven snowmobiles from Belgrano Station near the Weddell Sea, at the same latitude as McMurdo. It had taken them 38 days.
The previous day, nine skiers had arrived from the Weddell Sea coast. Among that group were the first British women to travel overland to the pole, the first married couple to do so and the first Australian to visit both poles.
A significant spot in an otherwise featureless landscape, the South Pole is an appealing goal for Antarctic adventurers traveling on the frozen plateau.
Mike Thornewill, of the multinational expedition, said he has been trying to get here for 30 years.
“I couldn’t get a plane so I had to walk,” he said. His wife Fiona, one of the first British women to get to the pole on skis, was equally pleased.
“It’s such a privilege to be here,” she said.
The expedition was a fundraiser for the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity. They have already raised $150,000. It’s part of their effort to involve large numbers of people in the endeavor, which saw them travel 730 miles in 61 days, each pulling a 200-pound sledge.
“If you’re going to take money from the community to do something, you should give something back,” Mike Thornewill said.
But the effort is also for the individuals on the team.
“We have a dream and an earnest desire to make our dream come true,” Thornewill said.
For the Argentinians it was different.
They were on a scientific traverse and intended to camp near the pole for a couple of days before returning to their station, said expedition doctor Nicolas Bernardi.
Other expeditions to arrive at the pole, or to declare it as a destination, included several groups hoping to celebrate New Year’s at the end of the Earth. Four Singaporeans and four British arrived on skis in time, while nine others flew in from Patriot Hills just to spend midnight at the pole.
The conditions continental traverses face today are very similar to those the early explorers endured. Clothing and shelter are of better materials, but hauling sledges across sastrugi isn’t much easier.
Food requirements are the same, if not higher, now. Safety margins are larger, requiring more supplies “just in case.”
Living conditions are still quite spare, the Thornewills agreed.
“I’d forgotten what a clean cup looked like,” Mike said.
Even in these tough conditions, though, it could be worse.
“It’s kinder here than in the Arctic,” said Grahame Murphy, the first Australian to visit both poles. He went to the North Pole in 1994, and would gladly trade the Arctic sea ice for sastrugi on the southern polar plateau.
The desire for primacy in arriving at the pole results in detailed descriptions involving nationality, gender, level of support, method of transportation and the route traveled. For example, Catharine Hartley and Fiona Thornewill were the first British women to arrive at the pole on skis from the coast.
When expeditions arrive at the pole, they are welcomed by station staff, who usually have had some warning of the arrival. They’re treated to hot drinks in the galley, and are often shown around the station’s science and support facilities.
It’s a welcome quite different from the one Scott saw, with a Norwegian flag flying atop an empty tent in the middle of the white desert.
At South Pole Station, in the middle of the polar plateau, people keep showing up. While most fly here on LC-130s, there are a growing number who can say they got here by land.
Just the other day, seven men in bright orange jackets appeared outside the station. They were Argentinians who had driven snowmobiles from Belgrano Station near the Weddell Sea, at the same latitude as McMurdo. It had taken them 38 days.
The previous day, nine skiers had arrived from the Weddell Sea coast. Among that group were the first British women to travel overland to the pole, the first married couple to do so and the first Australian to visit both poles.
A significant spot in an otherwise featureless landscape, the South Pole is an appealing goal for Antarctic adventurers traveling on the frozen plateau.
Mike Thornewill, of the multinational expedition, said he has been trying to get here for 30 years.
“I couldn’t get a plane so I had to walk,” he said. His wife Fiona, one of the first British women to get to the pole on skis, was equally pleased.
“It’s such a privilege to be here,” she said.
The expedition was a fundraiser for the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity. They have already raised $150,000. It’s part of their effort to involve large numbers of people in the endeavor, which saw them travel 730 miles in 61 days, each pulling a 200-pound sledge.
“If you’re going to take money from the community to do something, you should give something back,” Mike Thornewill said.
But the effort is also for the individuals on the team.
“We have a dream and an earnest desire to make our dream come true,” Thornewill said.
For the Argentinians it was different.
They were on a scientific traverse and intended to camp near the pole for a couple of days before returning to their station, said expedition doctor Nicolas Bernardi.
Other expeditions to arrive at the pole, or to declare it as a destination, included several groups hoping to celebrate New Year’s at the end of the Earth. Four Singaporeans and four British arrived on skis in time, while nine others flew in from Patriot Hills just to spend midnight at the pole.
The conditions continental traverses face today are very similar to those the early explorers endured. Clothing and shelter are of better materials, but hauling sledges across sastrugi isn’t much easier.
Food requirements are the same, if not higher, now. Safety margins are larger, requiring more supplies “just in case.”
Living conditions are still quite spare, the Thornewills agreed.
“I’d forgotten what a clean cup looked like,” Mike said.
Even in these tough conditions, though, it could be worse.
“It’s kinder here than in the Arctic,” said Grahame Murphy, the first Australian to visit both poles. He went to the North Pole in 1994, and would gladly trade the Arctic sea ice for sastrugi on the southern polar plateau.
The desire for primacy in arriving at the pole results in detailed descriptions involving nationality, gender, level of support, method of transportation and the route traveled. For example, Catharine Hartley and Fiona Thornewill were the first British women to arrive at the pole on skis from the coast.
When expeditions arrive at the pole, they are welcomed by station staff, who usually have had some warning of the arrival. They’re treated to hot drinks in the galley, and are often shown around the station’s science and support facilities.
It’s a welcome quite different from the one Scott saw, with a Norwegian flag flying atop an empty tent in the middle of the white desert.
Sunday, December 26, 1999
Running with the dogs
Published in the Antarctic Sun
Dogs. Roald Amundsen sped to the South Pole behind them. Robert Scott couldn’t get them to work. Shackleton’s men, unable to feed them, shot them.
Peter Cleary, now Scott Base’s operations manager, took care of Antarctic dog teams and worked with them for three years. One of those years, in the late 1970s, he was at Scott Base. For the other two, in the mid-1980s, he was with the British Antarctic Survey on the Antarctic Peninsula.
“My main job was field support,” Cleary said. In 10 summers on the Ice, this is his second season actually stationed at a base.
He remembers the dogs fondly. He was the handler for two teams of up to 12 dogs each in the summer of 1978-1979 and the winter of 1979. The dogs were big West Greenland huskies, bred for stamina rather than speed.
Though not used as extensively in the late 1980s as they had been in earlier years, Cleary said the dogs were involved in work on the sea ice and in crevasse areas.
The dogs were slower than vehicles, which gave them a safety edge. “Some of them became
aware of things like crevasses,” Cleary said. They would stop rather than go into a dangerous
place. Others, he said, would fall into any hole that happened to be in front of them.
The dogs were around mainly because they always had been. “They were a historical artifact,” Cleary said. “Psychologically, they were really good on the base.”
In winter, during the few days a month with constant moonlight, running the dogs was easy. In darkness, though, it was tough.
Just before Winfly, Cleary would take a team to Cape Royds, partly to get them into condition for the pulling season, but also to check out the sea ice conditions, which were sometimes treacherous.
“You can always pull a wet dog out, shake him a bit, and make him run around a while,” Cleary said.
Handling dogs was a challenge for Cleary, who had some experience with farm dogs in New Zealand, but considered his work on-the-job training.
After three years, he said, “I could consider myself a mildly competent dog handler,” but gave more credit to the dogs than to himself.
The dogs, he said, were very much individuals and had to be understood. Notes from previous years’ handlers were helpful, but experience was the real key.
It was a chance Robert Scott never gave himself. Dog handling, Cleary said, is a hard thing to learn.
Scott was versatile and tried dogs, ponies and motor vehicles. But he had particular problem with the dogs.
“They’re not pets and never were,” Cleary said. That was likely part of Scott’s problem. Scott was unable to think of the dogs as workers. Instead, he thought of them as companions on the journey.
“If he’d put as much effort into maintaining his dogs as he spent maintaining the ponies, he would have had a lot more success with the dogs,” Cleary said.
Cleary had a good measure of success, traveling up to 1,300 miles in a single season, over to White Island, up the Blue Glacier, and to Cape MacKay. But he stresses that those trips were low-key compared to sledging seasons in the heyday of dog teams, which saw multiple journeys of over 2,300 miles throughout the summer.
They always wanted to work, which often made for a bit of an exciting start to a trip.
“In the morning there’s always this insane first half mile,” Cleary said. But mostly they were
slower than vehicles, which wasn’t all bad. “Sometimes you need to slow down around here,” he said.
The dogs also pulled pranks, Cleary said. “Their favorite thing was to cock their leg on people’s legs and piss in people’s mukluks.”
But the dogs became a political issue. During the summer, they ate the food waste from McMurdo and Scott Base. But during the winter they ate seal. The meat was good for its high
fat content, but killing seals became unpopular.
In 1984 at a meeting in Madrid, the countries with Antarctic programs decided to phase out the use of dogs.
In 1986 New Zealand’s dogs left Scott Base for good. “I think at the time we didn’t really realize it was the end of an era,” Cleary said. “The whole business of their removal wasn’t just with the Scott Base dogs.”
The British, who had used their dogs very intensively through the early 1970s, didn’t take their dogs out until 1993.
When they left, Cleary said, “it was a sad day but it had a degree of inevitability. I regret they’re not here.”
He still misses one of his favorite times with the dogs, “listening to them in full throat on a moonlit night.”
Dogs. Roald Amundsen sped to the South Pole behind them. Robert Scott couldn’t get them to work. Shackleton’s men, unable to feed them, shot them.
Peter Cleary, now Scott Base’s operations manager, took care of Antarctic dog teams and worked with them for three years. One of those years, in the late 1970s, he was at Scott Base. For the other two, in the mid-1980s, he was with the British Antarctic Survey on the Antarctic Peninsula.
“My main job was field support,” Cleary said. In 10 summers on the Ice, this is his second season actually stationed at a base.
He remembers the dogs fondly. He was the handler for two teams of up to 12 dogs each in the summer of 1978-1979 and the winter of 1979. The dogs were big West Greenland huskies, bred for stamina rather than speed.
Though not used as extensively in the late 1980s as they had been in earlier years, Cleary said the dogs were involved in work on the sea ice and in crevasse areas.
The dogs were slower than vehicles, which gave them a safety edge. “Some of them became
aware of things like crevasses,” Cleary said. They would stop rather than go into a dangerous
place. Others, he said, would fall into any hole that happened to be in front of them.
The dogs were around mainly because they always had been. “They were a historical artifact,” Cleary said. “Psychologically, they were really good on the base.”
In winter, during the few days a month with constant moonlight, running the dogs was easy. In darkness, though, it was tough.
Just before Winfly, Cleary would take a team to Cape Royds, partly to get them into condition for the pulling season, but also to check out the sea ice conditions, which were sometimes treacherous.
“You can always pull a wet dog out, shake him a bit, and make him run around a while,” Cleary said.
Handling dogs was a challenge for Cleary, who had some experience with farm dogs in New Zealand, but considered his work on-the-job training.
After three years, he said, “I could consider myself a mildly competent dog handler,” but gave more credit to the dogs than to himself.
The dogs, he said, were very much individuals and had to be understood. Notes from previous years’ handlers were helpful, but experience was the real key.
It was a chance Robert Scott never gave himself. Dog handling, Cleary said, is a hard thing to learn.
Scott was versatile and tried dogs, ponies and motor vehicles. But he had particular problem with the dogs.
“They’re not pets and never were,” Cleary said. That was likely part of Scott’s problem. Scott was unable to think of the dogs as workers. Instead, he thought of them as companions on the journey.
“If he’d put as much effort into maintaining his dogs as he spent maintaining the ponies, he would have had a lot more success with the dogs,” Cleary said.
Cleary had a good measure of success, traveling up to 1,300 miles in a single season, over to White Island, up the Blue Glacier, and to Cape MacKay. But he stresses that those trips were low-key compared to sledging seasons in the heyday of dog teams, which saw multiple journeys of over 2,300 miles throughout the summer.
They always wanted to work, which often made for a bit of an exciting start to a trip.
“In the morning there’s always this insane first half mile,” Cleary said. But mostly they were
slower than vehicles, which wasn’t all bad. “Sometimes you need to slow down around here,” he said.
The dogs also pulled pranks, Cleary said. “Their favorite thing was to cock their leg on people’s legs and piss in people’s mukluks.”
But the dogs became a political issue. During the summer, they ate the food waste from McMurdo and Scott Base. But during the winter they ate seal. The meat was good for its high
fat content, but killing seals became unpopular.
In 1984 at a meeting in Madrid, the countries with Antarctic programs decided to phase out the use of dogs.
In 1986 New Zealand’s dogs left Scott Base for good. “I think at the time we didn’t really realize it was the end of an era,” Cleary said. “The whole business of their removal wasn’t just with the Scott Base dogs.”
The British, who had used their dogs very intensively through the early 1970s, didn’t take their dogs out until 1993.
When they left, Cleary said, “it was a sad day but it had a degree of inevitability. I regret they’re not here.”
He still misses one of his favorite times with the dogs, “listening to them in full throat on a moonlit night.”
Heating with waste, wasting less heat
Published in the Antarctic Sun
Facilities engineers are building two kinds of energy-saving networks around McMurdo Station. One network, of pipes, permits them to heat buildings at little cost. The other network, of wires, lets them centralize monitoring and control of heating systems in buildings around town.
Until recently, the power plant’s engines were cooled by giant radiators sitting behind the plant. The energy, called “waste heat,” escaped into the air. Last week, that changed.
Rather than transferring excess energy to the outside atmosphere, waste heat is now warming three McMurdo buildings. Facilities engineer Jim McAdam puts it another way: “We’ll do all the cooling of the engines with the town,” he said.
This is not the first time waste heat from the power-generation process will have been put to good use around McMurdo. When flash evaporators were used to purify seawater into drinking
water, excess heat from the power plant was part of that process. As well, the water plant has been heated with waste heat since Winfly 1998.
The new system came online in Crary and buildings 155 and 165 on Monday night. Eventually, the project will include the science cargo building, the firehouse, the hospital and the dorms.
“It went real well,” McAdam said of the changeover to waste heat.
It works like this: The water cooling the power plant’s engines will radiate heat to a loop containing a 60-percent glycol, 40-percent water solution. That solution will be pumped to buildings heated with the waste-heat system.
The buildings’ existing heating will remain in place as backup, and will automatically kick in if the primary system has problems. There is also a large boiler at the beginning of the waste-heat
loop that can substitute the engines’ waste-heat supply.
With waste heat as the main heat source for major buildings around town, boiler emissions will drop by 25 percent and over 450,000 gallons of fuel will be saved each year.
“It’s a win-win deal,” McAdam said.
The use of waste heat effectively doubles the efficiency of the engines. At present, only 31 percent of the energy put into the machines as fuel emerges as electricity.
The remaining 69 percent is emitted in exhaust and radiation from the engine itself (39 percent), and the heat removed by internal engine coolant (30 percent). It is the energy removed by internal coolant that will now be used to heat buildings.
The plan is also to replace the existing power plant with newer, more efficient generators. At that point, heat will also be collected from the machines’ exhaust and added to the waste-heat
loop.
The layout of McMurdo is ideal for this type of project, McAdam said, because the power is generated close to the community it serves. Thus, it is relatively easy to move the heat around
town.
The added efficiency of the waste-heat project is enhanced by other heating-system work going on around station.
As the engineers install waste-heat equipment in buildings, they are also checking for sources of potential heat loss.
Changes to Crary’s heat flow have cut the building’s heating requirements by half.
“We’re identifying key heat-wasting points,” McAdam said.
Another part of the project, which is also being piloted in Crary, is a remote system by which technicians in the power plant can monitor heating equipment around the station from a computer terminal.
Instead of having to go to each building to check equipment and temperatures, automated sensors throughout the new heating system will make those checks continuously.
One benefit of the new monitoring system will be a better understanding of how heating problems happen.
Rather than solving individual problems called in by building occupants, a technician will be able to look at a whole building at once to see where the real problem is. For example, if a building
is too hot because it’s not venting air properly, a repair can be made to the vent rather than to the heat supply.
The monitoring system also increases the efficiency of the waste-heat supply system. Along with variable-speed pumps, electronic monitoring permits fast response to changes in demands for heat around town.
“You just pump exactly what you need,” McAdam said. “It’s a little bit of new technology down here, but anywhere else it’s not.”
The project is ahead of schedule. Crary was the only building planned to come online this year, but buildings 155 and 165 are also being added now, rather than next year.
“We’ll have the whole project paid for before we finish,” McAdam said. It’s a seven-year plan that will pay for itself in less than three years.
“We can put in as much energy as we need and stop wasting so much of it,” McAdam said. McAdam is very proud of the team working with him on all the changes to the heating system around McMurdo.
“Those guys have put a lot of heart into this,” McAdam said of the workers who spent the winter on the project.
The bottom line, he said, is most important for the entire team. “When I leave we’ll be using less energy than when I arrived.”
Facilities engineers are building two kinds of energy-saving networks around McMurdo Station. One network, of pipes, permits them to heat buildings at little cost. The other network, of wires, lets them centralize monitoring and control of heating systems in buildings around town.
Until recently, the power plant’s engines were cooled by giant radiators sitting behind the plant. The energy, called “waste heat,” escaped into the air. Last week, that changed.
Rather than transferring excess energy to the outside atmosphere, waste heat is now warming three McMurdo buildings. Facilities engineer Jim McAdam puts it another way: “We’ll do all the cooling of the engines with the town,” he said.
This is not the first time waste heat from the power-generation process will have been put to good use around McMurdo. When flash evaporators were used to purify seawater into drinking
water, excess heat from the power plant was part of that process. As well, the water plant has been heated with waste heat since Winfly 1998.
The new system came online in Crary and buildings 155 and 165 on Monday night. Eventually, the project will include the science cargo building, the firehouse, the hospital and the dorms.
“It went real well,” McAdam said of the changeover to waste heat.
It works like this: The water cooling the power plant’s engines will radiate heat to a loop containing a 60-percent glycol, 40-percent water solution. That solution will be pumped to buildings heated with the waste-heat system.
The buildings’ existing heating will remain in place as backup, and will automatically kick in if the primary system has problems. There is also a large boiler at the beginning of the waste-heat
loop that can substitute the engines’ waste-heat supply.
With waste heat as the main heat source for major buildings around town, boiler emissions will drop by 25 percent and over 450,000 gallons of fuel will be saved each year.
“It’s a win-win deal,” McAdam said.
The use of waste heat effectively doubles the efficiency of the engines. At present, only 31 percent of the energy put into the machines as fuel emerges as electricity.
The remaining 69 percent is emitted in exhaust and radiation from the engine itself (39 percent), and the heat removed by internal engine coolant (30 percent). It is the energy removed by internal coolant that will now be used to heat buildings.
The plan is also to replace the existing power plant with newer, more efficient generators. At that point, heat will also be collected from the machines’ exhaust and added to the waste-heat
loop.
The layout of McMurdo is ideal for this type of project, McAdam said, because the power is generated close to the community it serves. Thus, it is relatively easy to move the heat around
town.
The added efficiency of the waste-heat project is enhanced by other heating-system work going on around station.
As the engineers install waste-heat equipment in buildings, they are also checking for sources of potential heat loss.
Changes to Crary’s heat flow have cut the building’s heating requirements by half.
“We’re identifying key heat-wasting points,” McAdam said.
Another part of the project, which is also being piloted in Crary, is a remote system by which technicians in the power plant can monitor heating equipment around the station from a computer terminal.
Instead of having to go to each building to check equipment and temperatures, automated sensors throughout the new heating system will make those checks continuously.
One benefit of the new monitoring system will be a better understanding of how heating problems happen.
Rather than solving individual problems called in by building occupants, a technician will be able to look at a whole building at once to see where the real problem is. For example, if a building
is too hot because it’s not venting air properly, a repair can be made to the vent rather than to the heat supply.
The monitoring system also increases the efficiency of the waste-heat supply system. Along with variable-speed pumps, electronic monitoring permits fast response to changes in demands for heat around town.
“You just pump exactly what you need,” McAdam said. “It’s a little bit of new technology down here, but anywhere else it’s not.”
The project is ahead of schedule. Crary was the only building planned to come online this year, but buildings 155 and 165 are also being added now, rather than next year.
“We’ll have the whole project paid for before we finish,” McAdam said. It’s a seven-year plan that will pay for itself in less than three years.
“We can put in as much energy as we need and stop wasting so much of it,” McAdam said. McAdam is very proud of the team working with him on all the changes to the heating system around McMurdo.
“Those guys have put a lot of heart into this,” McAdam said of the workers who spent the winter on the project.
The bottom line, he said, is most important for the entire team. “When I leave we’ll be using less energy than when I arrived.”
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