aquatherm products part of the geothermal system at Arina Beach Resort – Despite the difficult 2020 tourist season, which suffered greatly from the Corona pandemic, the four-star Arina Beach Resort hotel complex in Heraklion, Crete, upgraded and expanded its air conditioning and hot water production systems.
The hotel, which was not only renovated but also enlarged with new rooms, common areas and swimming pools, commissioned engineering firm Yfantis Engineering to design an innovative geothermal system to cover all the complex’s cooling and heating loads. Sychem SA installed the building services. For air conditioning, three water-cooled chillers with a total cooling capacity of 1.41 MW and a total heat recovery capacity of 1.57 MW were installed to save energy for heating water, heating swimming pools and desalinating 250 cubic metres of seawater per day. The systems are controlled by a Building Management System (BMS), that has an easy-to-understand graphical interface, allows remote control and performs energy
analysis and records all important parameters. In 2020, the Arina Beach Resort energy management system was among the largest energy integration projects in Greece using geothermal energy.
Products from aquatherm were used for the piping of the system. Key to their selection were the reduced thermal conductivity of the material polypropylene and the low pipe roughness, which remains unchanged even after long use. The special material properties also ensure that no corrosion occurs even after many years of operation. The fibre-reinforced pipe system aquatherm blue was used in sizes between 20 and 250 mm outer diameter, fibre-reinforced aquatherm green up to 200 mm as well as prefabricated elements
up to 355 mm.
