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Using Simulation Models for District Chilled Water Distribution Systems Design
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Date
2004
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu)
Texas A&M University (http://www.tamu.edu)
Texas A&M University (http://www.tamu.edu)
Abstract
The capital investment for the distribution system is often the most expensive portion of a district heating
and cooling system, which usually constitutes 50 to 70% of the total cost. Because of high initial cost, it is
very important to optimize the design. The focus of this paper is to demonstrate how the using of the
computerized simulation model can give the engineer the ability to explore many more alternative design
scenarios and to identify more cost-effective and robust designs. The University of Texas at San Antonio
needs to expand their central chilled water distribution system as a result of planned additions to the
campus. After a simulation model was constructed and calibrated for the existing campus chilled water
distribution system. Six different alternatives have been tried and compared with each other. One of the
scenarios was identified to be the optimal design. More detailed models were built for preliminary design.
Based on the simulation results, pipe sizes were selected for each scenario. The results indicated that
though there are many scenarios, the optimal scenario is the one which has the lowest cost and it can be
identified through simulation. The simulation models are very useful to find acceptable designs and to let
the engineer to consider the most optimized and cost-effective designs.