–Nabu Museum | Hitachi VRF project at El Heri, Lebanon
VRF
The place: Art museum celebrates Middle-Eastern art, from Bronze Age artifacts to contemporary artists
Overlooking the Mediterranean from the edge of a beach in the village of El-Heri, the Nabu Museum was born from its founders’ vision to showcase the best of antique and modern art of the Lebanon and neighboring countries and promote the rich cultural history of this region. The extraordinary architecture design of the building was developed by two internationally renowned artists from Iraq, Dia Azzawi and Mahmoud Obaidi. They created a poetic cubic shape in weathering steel, a material which changes color with the humidity from the sea.
In the center of the façade, a huge vertical window creates a playful mirroring effect, exchanging between the sea view from the inside, and the museum’s main gallery visible from outside.
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For this museum, facing a constant high ambient humidity in this area of Lebanon, not only temperature but also humidity control is critical to preserve the art collections’ integrity, especially a collection of rare historical manuscripts.
The museum houses unique collections of artifacts from the Mesopotamian era and Roman Empire – amongst other rich eras represented there. As a bridge to today’s art, it also showcases more recent collections including contemporary local artists.
The solution: Hitachi VRF ensures 20˚C temperature and 50% humidity levels as required in the Museum
Due to temperature and humidity-sensitive antiques and art housed in the building, the air conditioning system was expected to run 24/365 to ensure a constant air at 20˚C and dehumidify the air to 50% levels. In other words, reliability of the equipment was the prime criteria when choosing the HVAC system.
Hitachi VRF was preferred, known for its high quality and reliable after-sale service ensured by its local distribution partner Khater.
A second criteria -due to extensive AC usage- was energy efficiency, to save costs and reduce CO2-eq emissions. For that too, Hitachi Cooling & Heating could meet these needs. As a VRF system, it modulates the refrigerant flowing to each indoor unit based on each room’s demand, serving cooling or heating just as it needs, no more no less.
The chosen top-Flow modular SET FREE Sigma and the micro VRF Utopia units provide excellent energy efficiency, based on Hitachi Scroll Inverter compressors.
For indoors, over 1,500sq. meters of galleries and storage of the museum are cooled (or heated in winter) by a total of 20 low-height ducted indoor units from the FSN5E series. These units are equipped with an energy-saving DC Inverter fan motor and they deliver a very quiet operation, down to 27dB(A)*, which is ideal in a museum to ensure a peaceful and relaxing atmosphere to visitors. The units, like the rest of exposed equipment were painted in black to blend-in with the open ceilings on the same color.
Additionally, a Hitachi DX-Kit was installed, for the VRF system to cool/heat fresh air intake of air handling units installed inside the museum, preserving the indoor air quality for visitors.
To avoid visual obstructions of the cubic building’s facades and roof, the outdoor VRF units were placed on a metallic platform located at the building peripheral.
- Sound pressure at low fan speed of RPI 0.6FSN5E model.
Distributor: Khater
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Location
El Hery, North Lebanon, Lebanon
Project
New built
Date of installation
2018
Total System Capacity
117 HP
Outdoor units
SIGMA (2x RAS-28FSXNSE1 , 1x RAS-18FSXNSE1) , UTOPIA (1x RAS-3HVRNS3 , 4x RAS-10XHNPE)
Indoor units
Ducted units (4x RPI-1.5 FSN5E , 1x RPI-3.0 FSN5E , 1x RPI-4.0 FSN5E , 8x RPI-5.0 FSN5E , 6x RPI-6.0 FSN5E)
Distributor
Khater
