Optimal Configuration of a District Heating Network through Thermoeconomics.

An issue in planning district heating systems is the network extension. The network does not connect necessarily all the buildings in the town. The selection of the areas to be connected to the network should be made during the design process, since further variations in the planned topology are usually difficult and conduct to a non-optimal configuration. This paper deals with the synthesis of the district heating network using economic criteria, so that the optimal economic configuration is determined. The algorithm here proposed is based on the application of thermoeconomics, which allows one to reduce significantly the time required for solving the problem. An initial superstructure connecting all the possible users is built. Then the structure is progressively simplified, until the optimal configuration is found. The algorithm for the network simplification is based on a simulated annealing technique. The procedure is applied to the design of a district heating network in a small portion of the urban area of Turin. The choice is made in order to built a significant case study in order to test the procedure. The data for the network simulation are obtained from the real system.

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