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Century Hotel turns to solar energy for its water heaters
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Posted on Mar 19 2009
Beginning today, the Century Hotel in Garapan will officially be using solar energy to heat its water supply for guests and staff.
Century Hotel and Triple J Motors Saipan officials will meet on the rooftop of the hotel in Garapan this morning for a brief tour, product description and formal handover of six newly installed units of Solahart solar water heaters.
Six units of dual-panel, 80-gallon tank systems were installed last week at the Century Hotel. These units operate under the Thermosiphon Principal, which makes use of two naturally occurring phenomena for their operation; black objects absorb heat and hot water rises. It’s a simple system where water is the only moving part. The solar absorbers (collector panels) are filled with water. As the sun warms the collectors, the water inside becomes hotter, expands, becomes lighter and rises upwards toward the tank. The colder, heavier water is drawn down into the bottom of the collectors, where it is heated, then moves upwards…and so on. The circular heating motion is called the thermosiphon effect. The greater the difference in temperature between the water in the collectors and the water in the storage tank, the faster the flow between them.
These units are also closed-circuit systems, meaning local water or rainwater only flows in and out of the tank but not through the solar panels. Fresh water is pre-installed in the collectors and mixed with an anti-corrosion chemical. This is the water that heats in the panels and rises up to the outside jacket of the tank, surrounding and heating the water pumped into the core of the tank. The tanks have an internal double-layer ceramic lining that is fused to a steel casing.
This innovation is expected to save the Century Hotel the cost to heat water using CUC power.
Triple J Motors, Saipan is the authorized distributor of Solahart in the Marianas region. Solahart, an Australian company, is a subsidiary of Paloma, the largest hot water manufacturing company in the world, which includes Rheem U.S.A.[B][I](PR)[/I][/B]
