Assessing the Thermal Performance of District Heating Twin Pipes with Vacuum Insulation Panels
Paper in proceeding, 2015

In Sweden, around 10% of the energy supplied to the district heating networks are lost through heat losses from the distribution pipes. In cylindrical geometries it is preferable to improve the insulation as close to the center as possible. This has resulted in a hybrid insulation district heating pipe concept with a combination of vacuum insulation panels at the center, held in place by polyurethane foam. In the twin pipe concept, the vacuum insulation panel cover the supply pipe. This creates a complex temperature profile over the section and measured results on single pipes might not be applicable. Therefore, there is a need for a method to evaluate the improvement of hybrid insulation twin pipes in the laboratory. This paper presents a method where two guarded hot pipe apparatuses is used, one heating rod for each pipe, to measure the heat losses from hybrid pipes and compare to a conventional polyurethane pipe. The measurements indicate an improvement in thermal performance by 12%-18% for the total losses and by 29% -39% for the supply pipe losses.

thermal performance

district heating pipes

super insulation

hybrid insulation

Vacuum insulation panels

Author

Axel Berge

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Building Technology

Bijan Adl-Zarrabi

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Building Technology

Carl-Eric Hagentoft

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Building Technology

Energy Procedia

18766102 (ISSN)

Vol. 78 382-387

Areas of Advance

Building Futures (2010-2018)

Energy

Subject Categories

Infrastructure Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.egypro.2015.11.678

More information

Created

10/7/2017