Tour & Andersson has supplied a full range of balancing valves for Valencia’s magnificent opera house, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. It was designed by the world-renowned local architect Santiago Calatrava. The new opera house will be a symbol of Spain’s third largest city – Valencia.
With a total area of more than 40.000 square meters and a seating capacity of 4.000 people. El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía is one of the biggest opera houses in Europe. The building has four different theatre halls, the Main hall (Sala Principal), the Master class room (Aula Magistral), the Upper Auditorium (Auditorio) and the Chamber theatre (Teatro Martín y soler). Besides the theatres there are many other rooms like restaurants, dressing rooms, and backstage areas. These various areas have very different HVAC needs during the day, creating great complexity for indoor climate specialists.
To improve energy efficiency, the system was designed to use sea water for heating and cooling. For this reason four heat pumps were installed. Additionally, a heat recovery chiller uses otherwise rejected heat for preparing sanitary hot water and heating water. The terminal units used are fan coils and big air handling units. TA was asked for a solution that would solve the building’s diverse and demanding cooling and heating needs. Relying on its vast experience and with help from TA Hydronic College, TA came up with the simplest possible variable flow system that would solve the problem of providing just the right amount of heat or cooling to each indoor space, whether theatre hall or dressing room. Even this solution required more than 500 manual balancing valves and devices from DN 20 to DN 300. TA also selected software appropriate for the job of sizing and selecting the valves, supplied training and provided technical documentation.
The TA solution including design support, technical training and balancing devices made the hydronic system fully controllable so that the HVAC system will provide a comfortable indoor climate, minimise energy consumption and run smoothly for years to come.
“Since 1992, I have been using TA balancing valves in all my HVAC plants,” says Federico Cantera, who is in charge of the maintenance at the Opera House. “I appreciate the quality of TA’s products, as well as the excellence of the service
provided by the company.”
Project data
Type of project: New construction
Type of building: Opera house
Location: Valencia, Spain
Architect: Santiago Calatrava
Gross area: 40.000 square metres
Heating capacity: 5.300 kW
Cooling capacity: 6.500 kW
Type of terminal
Units: Fan coil units, air handling units
Products: STAD DN 15 to 50
STAF DN 65 to 300
Consultants: ICA and Grupotec
Contractor: UTE Nesco –
Dragados
Installer: ECI, S.A.
TA salesman: Juan Torralba
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