• Energy Research
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This scientific paper explains the effectiveness of W.K. Muhlbauer’s model in district heating networks. Its major focus is upon determining the level of risk of failure for heating network and as well as seeking a compromise between the capital expenses and the level of occupational safety.The use of software SimNet SSV Heat in our study case, efficiently determines the level of risk associated with leakage and predicts the behavior of leakage within pipeline of any length. It also reduces the level of risk normally associated with additional costs at the designing stage, construction and operations.

DiGriPy is a newly developed Python tool for the simulation of district heating networks published as open-source software in GitHub and offered as a Python package on PyPI. It enables the user to easily build a network model, run large-scale demand time series, and automatically compare different temperature-control conditions. In this paper, implementation details and usage instructions are given. Tests showing the results of different scenarios are presented and interpreted.

This study evaluates temperatures measured at district heating (DH) valves in manholes and their usability for non-destructively assessing the thermal performance of buried DH pipes. The study was conducted as a field test in which part of a DH network was shut down and the temperature decline in the valves was analysed in terms of absolute temperature and thermal response time from the DH pipe to the top of the valve. The calculated and measured supply pipe temperatures by the drainage valves were in good agreement, with 1% deviation. The valve measurement analysis from this study shows that the drainage valve has good potential to serve as a measurement point for assessing the thermal status of a DH network. However, the shutdown valve measurements were greatly affected by the manhole environment.

Energy systems should be analysed according to principles of sustainable development. The optimality of technical systems usually is evaluated by only technical and economical criteria. But the estimation of these criteria is not comprehensive enough in the case when system life cycle is much longer than the period of reliable economical prognosis. In this paper the criteria set of energy system evaluation and optimisation was expanded by energy and ecological standpoints and a new multiple criteria indicator (3E factor ‐ Energy, Economy, Ecology) was introduced. The application of this factor was demonstrated by two examples: optimisation of the district heating network pipeline replacement periodicity and optimisation of the thermal insulation of the single family house.