The prospects of district heating in the Southeast city district in Uppsala : Design considerations and performance analysis in a developing urban area

Sammanfattning

The construction of the Southeast city district in Uppsala will start in 2025 with plans to be completed in 2050. When a new district is built, there is an opportunity to explore the best possible solution to all the needs of the city, one of the needs that must be met is the heat demand of all buildings. One possible way to meet these needs is through district heating. The aim of this report is to design and investigate the efficiency of a heat distribution network in the Southeast city district by determining its distribution losses and the requirements that heating distribution networks must fulfill. The method used to satisfy the purpose is to simulate the systems through a model in Python. The model produces key parameters such as distribution losses, pressure drop and temperature drop during high heat demand and low heat demand. The results of the report shows what a possible distribution network design could look like for two stages of construction. It is also shown that during low heat demand, the highest distribution losses were in the return pipe. During the high heat demand, the highest distribution losses were in the supply pipe. This is also the period of the greatest mass flow rate, temperature drop and pressure drop. The discussion addresses the correlation between these parameters as well as exploring how connecting an additional building stage impacts the performance of the system. The conclusions of this paper is that the designed distribution networks fulfill the necessary criteria for pressure, temperature and energy delivery with acceptable distribution losses. When a additional stage is connected to the system, distribution losses do not increase significantly, making the model suitable for future extensions of district heating networks.