Lotte World Tower Seoul, South Korea
The Lotte World Tower is located in the centre of the city and houses apartments and offices as well as shops and restaurants. The climate friendly energy supply comes from 12 large Viessmann heat pumps.
A skyscraper of superlatives
The Lotte World Tower in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, was completed in 2016 and is 555 metres high. At the time of opening, the superlative-defining skyscraper was the tallest in South Korea and the fifth tallest in Asia and the world.
The tower is part of Lotte World, which is located in Seoul's southern district of Jamsil, on a site right in the centre of the city on the banks of the Han River. The "vertical city" offers plenty of space for private and public use. Spread over 123 floors are apartments, shops, offices, a 7-star hotel and various leisure facilities including a pool on the 85th floor, a restaurant at the top of the tower and an observation deck on the 123rd floor with breathtaking views over the South Korean capital. Its outer shell comprises tinted glass as well as metal elements that accentuate the building. International architectural firm Kohn Pederson Fox Architects, headquartered in New York, was involved in the complex planning for 13 years. The architects' aim was to stylishly combine contemporary elegance with traditional Korean art. The project was implemented by the construction department of the Lotte Group, a multinational conglomerate that employs over 56,000 people in South Korea.
Environmentally responsible energy supply with large heat pumps from Viessmann
A particularly environmentally responsible technology takes care of the energy supply: twelve large Viessmann heat pumps are responsible for providing the renewable part of the heating and air conditioning supply for this colossal building. Six brine/water heat pumps, each with a 1.7 MW heating output and a 1.9 MW cooling capacity, are supplied by 720 geothermal probes sunk 200 metres into the ground. In addition, six water/water heat pumps have been installed, each with a 2 MW heating output and a 1.7 MW cooling capacity. They use water from the river Han that runs past the tower. The river water is first filtered and passed through a heat exchanger outside the heat pumps. Here, the heat is transferred to a brine mixture and then transported to the heat pumps. This intermediate step ensures that only clean water flows through the evaporator, thereby guaranteeing high operational reliability of the heat pumps.
The twelve large heat pumps are operated in a cascade within an 8000 square metre heating centre, controlled by a higher-ranking control centre. The total heating output is 22.2 MW; the cooling capacity is 20.4 MW.