Life Cycle Assessment of an Electric Chiller Integrated with a Large District Cooling Plant

Chima Cyril Hampo, Ainul Bt Akmar and Mohd Amin Abd Majid
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Chima Cyril Hampo: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Seri Iskandar, Perak 32610, Malaysia
Ainul Bt Akmar: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Seri Iskandar, Perak 32610, Malaysia
Mohd Amin Abd Majid: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Seri Iskandar, Perak 32610, Malaysia

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: District cooling (DC) systems have recently proven to be more economically and environmentally viable as compared to conventional cooling techniques. In most DC setups, electric centrifugal chillers (ECCs) are installed to provide chilled water (CW) to charge the thermal energy storage (TES) tank or for direct CW supply to the DC network. The operation of these ECC systems consumes most of the electrical power supplied to the entire DC plant; this therefore strengthens the need to conduct a comprehensive environmental assessment in order to quantify the indirect ecological impact resulting from the energy consumed in the ECC system operation. In order to achieve this, a case study was conducted of four ECC systems with a use-life of 25 years installed in a large DC plant in Malaysia. A gate-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was adopted to analyze the environmental performance of the system setup. The result of the study year reveals that April and June account for the highest and lowest environmental impact, respectively. The influence of climatic temperature conditions on the monthly cooling and environmental load distribution was also observed from the results. Finally, in substantiating the study’s investigation, environmental performance based on the composition of two different electricity fuel mixes is discussed and compared. The results revealed a drastic decrease in environmental load as the ratio of non-renewable energy sources decreased in the composition of the mix, thereby reducing the contribution of the overall environmental impact of the ECC systems’ use phase.

Keywords: heating; ventilation; air conditioning; life cycle assessment; district cooling; electric centrifugal chillers; vapor compression chillers; environmental sustainability; fossil fuel; Malaysia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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