District heating system design for a university campus

Abstract

İzmir Institute of Technology campus is in use since 2000 and still under development. At present, heating is provided by individual fuel boilers. On the other hand, the campus has a geothermal resource in its borders with a temperature of 33 °C. Because of this low geothermal fluid temperature; heat pump district heating system is considered for the campus. As an alternative, fuel boiler district heating system is studied. Each heating system is simulated using hourly outdoor temperature data. For the simulations, a control system with constant flow rate and variable return water temperature is used and the main control parameter is the indoor temperature. Various heating regime alternatives have been studied for heat pump district heating system for the various condenser outlet temperature and geothermal fluid flow rate, and two of these alternatives are given in this study. Furthermore, economic analysis has also been done for each heating system alternative based on investment and operational costs. Results indicate that heat pump district heating system has the highest investment but lowest operational cost. The alternatives are evaluated according to internal rate of return method, which shows the profit of the investment and resulted that, the heat pump district heating system has minimum 3.02% profit comparing with the fuel boiler district heating system at the end of the 20-year period.