Renovation
The East Campus Steam Plant reopened in January 2010 after a $25 million renovation that marks another era at Duke: Natural gas—not coal—fuels the new boilers. The system increased steam capacity by 35 percent to heat academic and medical buildings, sterilize surgical equipment and maintain proper humidity for buildings, including an art museum and lab research area. The project was financed entirely by the university.
“It really is a historic restoration,” says Floyd Williams, who managed the project for Duke’s Facilities Management. “We took a building and added state-of-the-art technology to produce steam at high efficiency and ultra-low emissions.”
One of the goals of the project team was to provide a maximum amount of capacity without significantly impacting the architecture of the building. This was accomplished by selecting nominal 10,000 pound per hour steam boilers that provided the flexibility for 15 of these smaller boilers to fit into the building’s limited horizontal space but ample vertical space. A mezzanine that incorporates a portion of the old coal boiler structure was built to support the new space. Another advantage of boilers of this size versus the more traditional 80,000 pound per hour boilers was the new boilers do not require a large opening to be created in the historic façade. Instead they were moved in through an existing window. In addition, the boilers can be remotely operated, and from a cold state can make steam in less than five minutes, allowing the plant to be unmanned but monitored and controlled from Duke University’s new central utility control room
located on West Campus.
At the East Campus plant, dozens of crew members worked more than a year to renovate the 7,500-square-foot space. Site work involved a range of tasks, like restoring the rooftop shed for new mechanical equipment, grinding out and refilling most of the old brick mortar on the building and smokestack, replacing the entire roof and installing new architecturally accurate windows.
The architecture supported the engineering needs. Consider the following:
- An elevator shaft was created out of the old ash hopper.
- A floor was added in the sloped coal bunker that allows for new makeup air units.
- The coal shed was turned into new mechanical equipment space.
- The train trestle became an emergency exit from a mechanical space.
- The coal chutes were repurposed into vents to supply combustion air to the boilers.
The plant’s accompanying 175-foot-tall brick smokestack remains only as an architectural feature and a campus landmark, and the former office space was gutted and turned into a lobby/museum that displays one of the plant’s salvaged iron coal boiler fronts. The 2-story space also includes original construction drawings and photos of the renovation, as well as a system diagram explaining how the new plant works. It acts as a launching point for tours for engineering students, other institutions and consultants.