Context

At a height of 462m, the Lakhta Centre in St Petersburg is the tallest building in Europe and has a floor area of over 400,000m2. More than 530 Wilo pumps are in operation at this multipurpose site, covering several HVAC and water supply applications.

Requirement

Sustainability was one of the key considerations in the design of the Lakhta Centre, which has features such as a double-skin facade to reduce heating, ventilation and air conditioning consumption. For the building's services, one of the main requirements was that all pumps should be high-efficiency with an internal or external frequency converter. As such, inline pumps with electronic control were specificed, as well as high-pressure centrifugal pumps.

Solution

Wilo pumps are used across several applications throughout the building, including heating, ventilation, air conditioning and water supply. For the HVAC applications, the pumps are installed in several distinct substations on different levels of the tower.

The CronoLine-IL-E is an electronically controlled glanded single pump in in-line design, used for the pumping of heating water, cold water and water-glycol mixtures in heating, cold water and cooling systems.

The multistage centrifugal pump Wilo Helix can be used for water supply and pressure boosting as well as cooling water in circulation systems.

The building also relies on the Wilo-Stratos-D, a glandless double circulation pump that increases energy savings due to optimised system efficiency via a volume flow limiter.

Horizontal booster pumps (borehole pumps with a horizontal cooling shroud) are in operation for the water supply, to achieve a minimum water level in the storage tank.