The aim of the project is to analyze the enlargement of the district heating line located in Gävle, evaluating the hydraulic facilities and calculating the heat losses with different insulation thicknesses to choose the best insulation thickness for the pipes. To choose the best thickness, different insulation thicknesses have been evaluated calculating the heat losses for each insulation thickness.
To manage the heat losses problem, the pipe length has been divided into three stretches, underground pipe, sea pipe and air pipe. These three stretches have different boundary conditions, and each stretch has been calculated separately. The best thermal solution is choosing the insulation of 0.5m of thickness, but the best thermal solution is not the best solution for this project due to the elevated cost of this thickness in one of the stretches of the line.
The pipe crossing the seahas to be on the bottom and to keep the pipe on the bottom concrete is going to be added. The quantity of concrete needed depends on the floatability of the pipe and specifically depends on the insulation thickness. The insulation is a porous material and its density is very small, therefore it has a high floatability.
The final selection is a multi-thickness insulation, with different insulation thicknesses in the different stretches, 0.6m of thickness in the underground and air pipe and 0.3m of thickness in the sea pipe. With this configuration the heat losses are quite close to the optimum case. The purpose in the hydraulic study has been quantifying the start pressure in the new line to fulfil the energy demand in the worst point of the line.
With 320kPa at the start of line, the pressure in the worst point is enough to fulfil the nowadays demand, 3MW, and in the future when this line will be enlarged and the demand increased to 20MW, the pressure at the start of the line to ensure the requested pressure of 250kPa in the worst point should reach more than 380kPa. Having such pressure is not recommended to avoid the pressure hammer and to build a new pumping station after the sea pipe is recommended.
Source: University of Gävle
Author: Sanchez, Javier
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