Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In the Swedish city a lot of initiatives concern the building sector. Some new
projects are related to parts of the city that have been built ex novo. These projects
are quite interesting from the technological point of view since they are practical
implementations of sustainable and efficient buildings (the buildings at Zeroplus
are energetically autonomous and also produce supplementary energy for the
neighbouring areas); the Hammarby Sjöstad district in the city centre and the
Royal Seaport project, that will soon be completed. The Hammarby Sjöstad, HS,
project represents the first application of the ''Vision 2030'' plan, that has con-
tributed to the victory of the Green Capital prize, given to the city of Stockholm in
2010.
The district has a high population density; When finished (2016) it will host
10,000 dwellings for 25,000 people and additional 5,000 working in the area over
250 hectares.
Living spaces are full of light, there are almost no private cars, a metro-tram
infrastructure allows fast mobility on green boulevards, squares are pedestrianized
and there are a lot of bikes.
The strategic elements of the project are those that do not appear: the waste re
cycling system collects the residential rubbish through pneumatic ducts and treats
them to get biogas, the latter is reused in the flats, in the remote heating central
system and in the bus parking area, where also the inhabitants can buy fuel for
cars.
The history of HS starts at the beginning of the nineties when Stockholm
decides to be a candidate at the Olympic games in 2004. A team of architects and
engineers identifies in the former industrial area of Hammarby the ideal area to
build the Olympic village.
In the original project the main feature was the implementation of an eco-
sustainable architecture. Stockholm does not attain the Olympic games, but the
Hammarby project is not left aside, it is instead potentiated and converted to
residential use.
Today the urban plan shows the main building initiative in Sweden in the last
30 years.
At Hammarby Sjöstad the waste, suitably separated, are collected in under-
ground cisterns emptied by enormous extractors and sent to recycling (limiting the
use of the anti-aesthetic waste bins and minimizing the waste collection).
The waste that cannot be recycled is instead carried to the local incinerator. The
Högdalen co-generation plant separates combustible waste as an energy source in
electricity and district heating production. The combustion generates heat enough
to cover 47 % of the domestic need of heat. Another example of sustainable heat
supply is the Hammarby thermal plant, which recovers waste heat from treated
wastewater piped from the Henriksdal sewage treatment plant covering 34 % of
the needed heat. The remaining 16 % is produced by the combustion of bio-oils.
These oils originate from forest materials and grain, as well as animal fat that are
not employed in the food industry. Bio-oils have almost the same properties as
heating oil.
