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District cooling is a system that delivers chilled water from centralized plants to multiple buildings for air conditioning needs. It provides more efficient cooling than individual building systems through economies of scale and load diversity. District cooling can utilize sources like seawater in winter and uses less energy than compressors. It offers benefits like reduced noise pollution, refrigerant use, and cost through shared infrastructure and maintenance. However, district cooling also faces disadvantages like high initial costs and potential environmental impacts from water use.

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208 views6 pages

Etm Micro Project

District cooling is a system that delivers chilled water from centralized plants to multiple buildings for air conditioning needs. It provides more efficient cooling than individual building systems through economies of scale and load diversity. District cooling can utilize sources like seawater in winter and uses less energy than compressors. It offers benefits like reduced noise pollution, refrigerant use, and cost through shared infrastructure and maintenance. However, district cooling also faces disadvantages like high initial costs and potential environmental impacts from water use.

Uploaded by

Altaf zaidi Shaikh
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Information on District Cooling

District cooling is the cooling equivalent of district heating. Working on broadly similar
principles to district heating, district cooling delivers chilled water to buildings like offices
and factories needing cooling. In winter, the source for the cooling can often be seawater, so
it is a cheaper resource than using electricity to run compressors for cooling. Alternatively,
District Cooling can be provided by a Heat Sharing Network which enables each building on
the circuit to use a heat pump to reject heat to an ambient ground temperature circuit.
There are also 5th generation district heating and cooling systems (so called cold district
heating networks) that are able to provide both heating and cooling simultaneously. In these
systems the waste heat from chillers can be recycled and used for space heating or hot water
production.

Benefits of DCS
 Energy Saving
DCS is a very energy-efficient cooling solution as it takes full advantage of economy of
scale, diversity in cooling demand for different buildings, and high standard of plant
operation and maintenance. Although energy saving arising from DCS varies according to
the DCS configuration, such as length of distribution pipework’s, heat rejection method
and other plant efficiency improvement schemes, a typical saving of around 35% and
20% can be achieved when compared with traditional air-cooled air-conditioning systems
and individual water-cooled air-conditioning systems using cooling towers respectively.

 Reduce Green House Gas Emission


The reduction of energy consumption by using district cooling system, due to improved
energy efficiency, helps to reduce fossil fuel consumption for power generation.
Consequently, greenhouse gas emission such as carbon dioxide which causes the global
warming can also be reduced.

 Reduce Noise Pollution


With the removal of chiller plants and heat rejecting condensers from individual buildings,
noise, vibration, thermal plume and waste heat pollution can be significantly reduced.
Equipment that are located at central DCS plant can be kept under better acoustic, vibration
and waste heat control.

 Reduce Refrigerant Usage


The refrigerant used in air-conditioning equipment can be another source of environmental
pollutant. In DCS, the quantity of refrigerant required to serve a district is less than the total
amount of refrigerant required for individual centralised air-conditioning systems due to
smaller overall plant size as a result of the load diversity and reduction of number of standby
chillers. Besides, the refrigerant of DCS plants is handled by a specialised maintenance team,
which can minimise the chance of accidental leakage.

 Improve City Skyline


Removing the roof top chiller plant allows the architect to have greater flexibility in
designing the building envelope. Since there is no need to accommodate the chiller, building
roof can be designed with more artistic elements such as recreational facilities and sky
gardens. This will eventually help to improve the city outlook

 Improve Building Space Utilisation


Buildings using the DCS service can save remarkable plant room area since chiller plant is no
longer required. In general, it is estimated that an average of 75% of plant room space can be
saved when compared with conventional air-conditioning plant. This has not taken into
account the space saving of power company's transformer room as a result of removal of the
chiller plant.

 Improve Reliability and Flexibility


DCS enables the building owner/management company to simplify their building
management team since the building has no chiller plant equipment to operate and maintain.
There is no need to allow provision for chiller replacement, fewer constraints in expanding
cooling capacity and less spare parts need to be stocked. Building owners can then focus
more on their core business. Compared with conventional centralised air-conditioning
system, district cooling systems are built with standby cooling capacity to ensure that cooling
is always available at the central plant. Distribution systems are generally designed with
multiple loops or other back-up to provide additional reliability in distribution. Overall, the
reliability provided by a properly designed and constructed district cooling system is greater
than most buildings can achieve individually.

Besides, computerised energy management system in the chiller plant will monitor and
manage chilled water supply to users ensuring stable supply of cooling at all times.

 Costs Saving
A district cooling system allows the building owner to eliminate their on-site chiller operation
and maintenance. By doing this, the building owner no longer needs to operate and maintain
chillers, and replace chillers at the end of their life cycles. Therefore, building owners using
DCS can minimize the capital investment and the subsequent maintenance costs for their air-
conditioning plants.

Disadvantages of DCS:
 Depending on the central plants, DCSs may not totally be environmentally friendly as
long-term use of the free cooling sources such as sea or lake might affect the temperature
of the sources and limit the cooling capacity if no anticipating measures are considered. It
also could affect the ecosystem of the sources.

 A free cooling system uses a vast amount of water, which is a problem in areas lacking
water.

 Heat loss within the plant itself as well as the building serviced by the DHC due to
distribution losses in pipes and heat exchangers is inevitable

 Selection of a system that shows large environmental benefits may, in fact, end up not
being economical as both the environmental and economic aspects have to be considered
together.

 In purpose to utilize cogeneration of district system and electricity, larger DHC is


required.

 High initial investment costs and lack of negotiable prices and tariffs from the customer’s
side as DCS are often owned by few local energy companies, and there is a risk of
monopoly for the cooling prices and tariffs.

Countries that have accepted the use of district cooling


1. Canada 8. Netherlands
2. France 9. Qatar
3. Finland 10. Singapore
4. Germany 11. Sweden
5. Hong Kong 12. Switzerland
6. India 13. United Arab Emirates
7. Kuwait 14. United States

This system is majorly used for (application)


1. Cold storage 2. Dehumidification

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