Use body heat to do energy

According to a new Swedish project, daily temperatures of hundreds of thousands of people visiting Stockholm Central Station will be used to heat a new office building nearby.

"There are a lot of people who come to Central Station and we want to use the warmth from them to help heat the new building," said Karl Sundholm, a state property manager at Jernhuset .

Body heat radiates from the head of an athlete.A project of Swedish state-owned property management company Jernhuset will use the body temperature of hundreds of thousands of people to visit Stockholm Central Station every day to heat a crowded office building.(Photo: AFP)

About 250,000 people come to this station every day to catch trains and subways or simply browse the shops inside. Sundholm said: 'Everyone radiates heat and seeks to release the heat very hard. Instead of opening windows to escape heat, we want to make use of it through the ventilation system. '

The body temperature will warm the water and the water will then be pumped back into the pipeline to the new office building, including a small hotel and a few shops expected to be completed in early 2010.

According to Sundholm, this technology is nothing new but will be applied in a different way. There are only pipes, water and pumps, but no one has applied it before. He also added Jernhuset hoped the system would reduce building heating costs by 20%.

Installing this heating system is not too complicated and expensive. According to Sundholm's calculations, the cost of installing the necessary pump and piping system is about 200,000 kronor (Swedish money, equivalent to $ 31,200).'If compared to the hundreds of millions of kronor to build a building, the cost seems insignificant.'