The Belgian demo site is an engineering college located in Liège acommodating some 1,200 students. The aging building is owned by Province of Liège and has a good replication potential for other public buildings. Furthermore, the college students are able to fully appreciated how state-of-the-art technologies in that they now a live showcase on their doorstep.
The college building had a high heating demand quantified at 180kWh/(m2y) for an overall area of 23,600m2. The interventions included active and passive technologies.
The aim of the passive technologies was to reduce this high demand in heating through:
 | Insulation of 1,045 m² of roofing in block No. 1 and 6. |
 | Replacement of 1,153 m² of main curtain wall in block No. 1. |
 | Installation of 22 prototypes of UHA (decentralized ventilation units) in classrooms, laboratories and offices. |
 | Replacement of 1,293 m² frames by high thermal performance windows and suitable with a decentralized ventilation system + insulation of 2,486 m² of facades. |
The aim of the active technologies was to switch to biomass fuel to produce much of the heat and electricity required.
The BRICKER system at Liège consists of an ORC co-generation unit coupled to a 1.5MW capacity biomass boiler. This boiler uses thermal oil an an energy carrier.
Biomass boiler
Main results
Energy cost (€/year) for combined active and passive solutions
Pre-BRICKER | Post-BRICKER |
312,230 | 233,691 |
Primary energy savings (%)
Passive savings | Active savings |
23 | 61 |
Annual CO2 savings (%)
Passive savings | Active savings |
23 | 50 |