Ice arena O’Brien Group Arena

The ice arena houses two Olympic-size ice rinks, state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems, seating for up to 1,000 people, a special fitness room for winter sports, a café, a bar, and conference rooms.
The OPEN EMS system from DEOS AG was selected as the controller for the ventilation system. The DEOS building automation system was chosen specifically for the O’Brien Group Arena because DEOS has exclusive rights in Australia for the COBAOPT optimization system (now OPENdynamics), which was developed in Germany.
In the specific case of the ice rink, the HVAC system had to be designed so that the temperature on the ice surface was -2 °C and 14 °C 1.5 m above the ice surface. An additional difficulty in terms of heat layer formation is the ceiling height (> 10 m) as well as heat transport and ice melting. In addition, the ice surface has two different textures. The COBAOPT system was selected as the solution. It uses a unique control algorithm that is easy to program to achieve uniform mixing of the air molecules. The result is even temperature distribution and energy savings in the HVAC systems.