James Gormley Bike Arrival Station

Combining the cutting-edge technology of Automatic Heating’s Revere™️ CO2 heat pump technology with first class, WaterMark-approved stainless steel hot water storage tanks, this customised hot water heating solution provides efficient and reliable supply of hot water for 28 showers as well as for the hydronic heating system of the James Gormley Bike Arrival Station.

Located inside the Clayton Campus of Monash University, this bike arrival station was built in 2010 for the use of the university staff and students, and is the first of its kind to be built outside Australia’s Central Business District. Aside from 100 bicycle parking slots, the station also houses a DIY bike repair area and various hygiene facilities like showers, toilets, drinking fountains, lockers, and change area. This initiative to support sustainable transport earned the nod of the local community, causing the building to win an award and top the Built Environment Category of the Monash World Environment Day Awards organised by the Monash City Council in 2011.

As a facility built to promote environmental consciousness, it is fitting that in 2020, that the bike arrival station’s hot water system now uses the Revere™️ CO2 heat pump; a type of heat pump known to be highly efficient and environment-friendly. As the name suggests, this heat pump uses carbon dioxide refrigerant that is in supercritical state. This means that the fluid is subjected above its critical pressure and temperature, causing it to adopt properties midway between its gas and liquid states. This eliminates the refrigerant’s need to change phases during evaporation and condensation, allowing it to transfer heat across a wider temperature range from 90°C down to 10°C. Thus, the maximum hot water temperature as well as the efficiency (measured by its Coefficient of Performance) achieved by the CO2 system is higher than most conventional heat pump systems. Furthermore, compared to its predecessors like HFCs and HCFCs, carbon dioxide does not deplete the ozone layer and has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) value of only 1, making it more eco-friendly than other refrigerants.