Borehole cooling for Green Park Station
Feb 2012
Transport for London News Release
- Morgan Sindall is awarded a £9 million (US$14.25 million) contract to cool the platforms at London Underground's Green Park tube station.
- As part of an ongoing programme of work to cool the Tube, work will begin later this month on the installation of air-cooling units at Green Park and at Oxford Circus.
- At Green Park station borehole-cooling technology will be used. London Underground has already successfully drilled wells to source naturally cool water from deep below Green Park and will now install air cooling units that will use the water to cool the Victoria and Piccadilly line platforms (Fig 1).
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Fig 1. Borehole-cooling technology for Green Park
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Fig 2. Chilled water-cooling for Oxford Circus
- At Oxford Circus station there are already air-cooling units in the ticket hall but these will now be installed on every platform (Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines). The new units will use cool air provided by chiller units that will be installed on top of a building owned by Transport for London, which is adjacent to the station (Fig 2).
- Morgan Sindall will install eight air-cooling units at Green Park that will be fed from a series of boreholes, while Birse Metro is awarded the contract to install 14 similar units and associated construction services at Oxford Circus.
- Jag Paddam, Managing Director of Infrastructure at Morgan Sindall, said: "We have previously worked on similar Cooling the Tube projects for London Underground and will be applying this past experience to ensure the project is completed on time."
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How the installed units might look at platform level
- David Waboso, TfL Capital Programmes Director, said: "Cooling the Tube is one of the greatest engineering challenges faced by London Underground. We are investing millions to cool temperatures for passengers through a programme that will include the delivery of new air-conditioned trains similar to those introduced on the Metropolitan line in 2010. These will also be rolled out across the Circle, Hammersmith & City and District lines."
- Currently the system operates 22 air conditioned trains, but an extra 160 are planned to be in service by 2016.
- Cooling is a constant problem on the deep level lines of London Underground because the tunnels were designed and built with only enough room for trains, leaving little space for installation of cooling units.
- This is not the first time London Underground has used ground water to help cool stations. An award-winning and environmentally friendly ground water cooling scheme at Victoria station uses water that is already pumped out of the station to provide cool air.
- The work is scheduled to be completed by summer this year (2012).
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