Napoli afragola stazione
Once completed, 3 million people will use the hub.

The Porta del Sud (Naples Afragola Station) is the new high-speed train hub designed by the architect Zaha Hadid. 56* high-speed trains arrive each day (*data from the timetable until December 14, 2019) linking the hub with the main cities between Turin and Salerno and also with Venice and Reggio Calabria.

The main body of the station is long 400 meters and oversteps the binaries as a big bridge. It has a surface of 30 thousand squared meters on 4 levels: the first one is dedicated to the trains, on the second one there are the ticket offices and travelers services and on the third and fourth level there will be commercial services.

Napoli afragola stazione
The air conditioning system

Comfort is guaranteed by 3 Clivet heat pumps SPINChiller3 Multifunction with more than 1.200 KW each. They can produce contemporaneously and independently hot and cold water according to the installation requests with very high efficiency.

When there is 100% cooling request and 0% heating request, the unit satisfies the installation request, suppling the frigorific capacity on the cold side. The source side exchanger assimilates the excess of energy.

When there is 0% cooling request and 100% heating request the unit satisfies the installation request, suppling the thermal capacity on the heat side. The source side exchanger assimilates the excess of energy.

When there is a 100% cooling request and 100% heating request, the unit satisfies the installation request, suppling contemporaneously the frigorific capacity on the cold side and the thermal capacity on the heat side thanks to the heating recovery. In this condition, there is not wasted energy, the source side exchanger is not used and the unit works with the maximum efficiency.

Those units are based on the heat pump technology, high energy saving solution because they use the heat contained in the ambient in order to generate comfort. This reduces the energy consumption up to 50% in comparison with traditional combustion systems and has a low environmental impact, because these units does not use fossil sources reducing the CO₂ emissions. Thanks to the integrated energy saving, all the thermal energy that should be dispersed during the production of cold water is recovered to produce free hot water increasing even more the whole efficiency of the system.

The technical solutions adopted contribute to these results: the recovery heat exchanger works as total recovery and as partial recovery according to the thermal installation needs so even when the thermal and frigorific needs are not balanced the unit maintain the best operative conditions, increasing the complex efficiency in comparison to plants that don not adopt these solutions. Less inside changes, actually, mean best reliability.

20.000 m² of thermal solar panels help to sanitary hot water production and winter heating.

The results

The use of these two systems has allowed to reduce the energy consumption and to save more than 25 tons of CO2 per year.

The heating boiler is not necessary, so it is possible to eliminate the costs of gas connection and periodical controls. As it is a completed electrical installation, local combustion gas emissions were eliminated, reducing the environmental impact of this important train junction.

Other advantages of SPINChiller3 Multifunction are the simple installation and a lower first investment. Having only one unit that produces hot and cold water at the same time allows to reduce plant encumbrance, simplify the hydronic circuit, reduce installation time and costs and assure an only and optimized regulation of the system.

The team

  • Mechanical installer: Consorzio Afragola FS Scarl
  • Installation design on behalf of Afracola Scarl: Rocca Bacci Associati - Genova using for the mechanical installation the Serenari Paolo Studio Thyke Srl - Bologna