Soil thermal conductivity prediction for district heating pre-insulated pipeline in operation

Matjaz Perpar, Zlatko Rek, Suvad Bajric and Iztok Zun

Energy, 2012, vol. 44, issue 1, 197-210

Abstract: The research refers to the district heating (DH) system in Ljubljana, which includes 245km of highly diversified pipelines. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the soil thermal conductivity coefficient (λs) on the heat loss from pre-insulated pipes during operation. Pipeline geometry, material properties (particularly insulation and soil thermal conductivity) and time-dependent data on supply, return and environs temperature were considered. Measurements of temperature, moisture, thermal conductivity of soil and heat flux through the soil were carried out at the chosen locations on the pre-insulated pipeline. In addition, laboratory measurements were conducted on the soil samples from this site in order to determine the soil density, specific heat and thermal diffusivity. For the evaluation of heat loss, transient and steady-state numerical simulations of the soil temperature field were performed. In transient simulations, in addition to the impact of environment temperature, the influence of supply and return temperatures was taken into account. A method for λs prediction during pipeline operation is presented. The algorithm is based on a comparison of the measured (Θexp) and simulated (Θsim) temperatures in the selected period of time with the same boundary conditions.

Keywords: District heating; Heat loss; Measurements; Numerical simulation; Soil thermal conductivity prediction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544212004884
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:44:y:2012:i:1:p:197-210

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2012.06.037

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().