Empa completes new research campus
The joint campus of Empa and Eawag in Dübendorf has grown by three modern buildings from 2021 to 2024. These offer employees and guests more space for research and innovation. Innovations from the Empa and Eawag laboratories have also been implemented during construction.
The new research campus, called "co-operate", will provide space for new ideas: The further development of the campus in Dübendorf is important in order to remain at the forefront of research, according to the press release. The expansion will be completed for the time being with the opening in July 2024.
Modern, green and virtually traffic-free
The campus includes a new, state-of-the-art laboratory building, a multifunctional building and a parking garage. The new buildings now allow the existing laboratory building from the 1960s to be renovated without major interruptions to day-to-day business. The new laboratory building houses around 30 new laboratories and just as many offices in a compact structure. According to Empa, the building volume, including the multifunctional areas on the first floor, is just under 40,000 cubic meters. The new parking garage offers 260 parking spaces for employees and visitors; in return, the parking spaces scattered throughout the site have been gradually removed, which reduces car traffic on the site. The new multifunctional building in turn offers around 1,000 square meters of office space. On the first floor is the "Flair" bistro with a loggia facing the campus square. All new buildings are Minergie-P-Eco certified.
Innovations from the Empa laboratories for practical application
Developments and innovations from the Empa laboratories were also realized in the new campus, especially in the energy and building sector. From now on, research will not only be carried out in, but also on and with the new buildings. For example, a field of 144 geothermal probes, which reach down to a depth of 100 meters, stores the waste heat from the buildings. In winter, this heat is extracted from the ground and raised by a heat pump to be used for heating.
But that's not all: instead of a "conventional" low-temperature geothermal probe field, a new, experimental high-temperature geothermal probe storage system has been built. The waste heat from the chillers is fed into the ground via the geothermal probes in summer. The seasonal geothermal storage tank is thus "charged". In winter, the energy is extracted from the ground again for heating; the seasonal geothermal energy store is "discharged". This seasonal cycle is then repeated again and again. As part of a research project, this innovation will now be studied in detail over the next few years to find out how it affects the campus's energy supply, operation and security of supply.
Eawag is also investigating how the use of high-temperature borehole heat exchangers affects the surrounding soil, the groundwater and the microorganisms living in it. Switzerland already has the highest density of geothermal probes in Europe, which is why the project is attracting a great deal of interest from the federal government and the cantons. In addition, thanks to special separating toilets, urine is collected in the new laboratory building and transported to Eawag's "Water Hub" in NEST. In the laboratory there, it is processed into plant fertilizer.
Source: Empa
