Figure 1: Location of the Port Edgar Marina Engineer’s Workshop field trial
Port Edgar Marina is a popular year-round leisure destination for boat owners and their families, sailing enthusiasts, and watersports activities. It is also home to a wide range of businesses, organisations, and clubs. The marina offers boat maintenance and repair services from the workshop situated on the pier, serving the pontoon.
In collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and SeaWarm, Port Edgar Marina have installed a SeaWarm system in the engineering workshop on the pier a.k.a The Loop Shed.
This has provided a test site to demonstrate SeaWarm’s suitability for marina applications and allowed different technological solutions to be tested and assessed. Furthermore, the installation is providing year-round low-carbon heating and improving the working conditions of the staff as the building was previously unheated.
Key features:
A particular challenge for the site is the 6-meter tidal range, leaving the area beneath the building out of the water at low tides. To ensure the constant availability of water, the water intake was situated on a pontoon finger (as defined by the SEPA extraction location).
This location has provided a test-bed for multiple water intake technologies from suction pumps to submersible pumps, each with their own technical requirements.
A 13 kW heat pump (Kensa EVO, www.kensaheatpumps.com ) is coupled with a single SEAWARM unit. This supplies heating to the uninsulated building through a combination of standard and over-sized radiators andhas proven the ability of the HotTwist to harness 13 kW of heat from the seawater from seawater temperatures as low as 4°C.
Figure 2: The SeaWarm pod being filled with seawater for the first time during commissioning
