In the present paper the possible energy savings achievable by means of dry coolers adoption in cooling plants serving shopping mall buildings has been carried out. In these buildings, could happens that, due to internal gains caused by occupancy, lighting, and electrical devices, or because of solar radiation entering through the large skylights on the aisle, some zones have to be cooled also during the middle and the winter seasons. The aim of this work is the evaluation of the energy saving, reachable when a water indirect free cooling system is integrated into a traditional cooling equipment in a shopping mall. Depending on outside climate conditions, the dry-cooler units could be used alternatively to cool down the refrigerant flow, or the water supplied to fan coils, achieving in such a way an indirect free cooling; so, the proposed system allows to turn off the chiller. By means of energy simulations, electrical energy saving in different locations has been evaluated. Simulations results allowed a comparison between a traditional plant and a plant equipped with a dry-cooler. These simulations were useful to evaluate the influence of weather conditions in the dry cooler integration convenience.
Low grade waste heat is an underutilized resource in process industries, which may consider investing in urban symbiosis projects to make heating and cooling available to proximal urban areas through district energy networks. A long distance between industrial areas and residential users is a barrier to the feasibility of these projects, given the high capital intensity of infrastructure, and alternative uses of waste heat, such as power generation, may be more attractive in spite of electric efficiency. This paper introduces a parametric approach to explore the economic feasibility limits of industrial waste heat based district heating and cooling (DHC) of remote residential buildings in temperate climates. It also proposes a comparative water-energy-carbon nexus analysis of district heating and cooling and of Organic Rankine Cycles for power generation in an Italian and in an Austrian setting. The results show that, for a generic 4MW industrial waste heat flow steadily available at 95°C, district heating and cooling is the best option from an energy-carbon perspective in both countries. Power generation is the best option in terms of water footprint in most scenarios, and is economically preferable to DHC in Italy. Maximum DHC feasibility threshold distances are in line with literature, and may reach up to 30 km for waste heat flows of 30 MW in Austria. However, preferability threshold distances, above which waste heat-to-power outperforms DHC from an economic viewpoint, are shorter, in the order of 20 km in Austria and 10 km in Italy for 30 MW waste heat flows.
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