Optimizing the District Heating Primary Network from the Perspective of Economic-Specific Pressure Loss

Haichao Wang, Lin Duanmu, Xiangli Li and Risto Lahdelma
Additional contact information
Haichao Wang: Institute of Building Environment and Facility Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Lin Duanmu: Institute of Building Environment and Facility Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Xiangli Li: Institute of Building Environment and Facility Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Risto Lahdelma: Department of Energy Technology, Aalto University School of Engineering, P.O. Box 14100, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 8, 1-12

Abstract: A district heating (DH) system is one of the most important components of infrastructures in cold areas. Proper DH network design should balance the initial investment and the heat distribution cost of the DH network. Currently, this design is often based on a recommended value for specific pressure loss ( R = ? P / L ) in the main lines. This will result in a feasible network design, but probably not be optimal in most cases. The paper develops a novel optimization model to facilitate the design by considering the initial investment in the pipes and the heat distribution costs. The model will generate all possible network scenarios consisting of different series of diameters for each pipe in the flow direction of the network. Then, the annuity on the initial investment, the heat distribution cost, and the total annual cost will be calculated for each network scenario, taking into account the uncertainties of the material prices and the yearly operating time levels. The model is applied to a sample DH network and the results indicate that the model works quite well, clearly identifying the optimal network design and demonstrating that the heat distribution cost is more important than the initial investment in DH network design.

Keywords: district heating network; optimization; pumping cost; heat distribution cost; initial investment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/8/1095/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/8/1095/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:10:y:2017:i:8:p:1095-:d:105930

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().