Central heating

A central heating system provides warmth to a number of spaces within a building from one main source of heat. It is a component of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (short: HVAC) systems, which can both cool and warm interior spaces. A central heating system has a furnace that converts fuel or electricity to heat. The heat is circulated through the building either by fans forcing heated air through ducts, circulation of low-pressure steam to radiators in each heated room, or pumps that circulate hot water through room radiators. Primary energy sources may be fuels like coal or wood, oil, kerosene, natural gas, or electricity. Compared with systems such as fireplaces and wood stoves, a central heating plant offers improved uniformity of temperature control over a building, usually including automatic control of the furnace. Large homes or buildings may be divided into individually controllable zones with their own temperature controls. Automatic fuel (and sometimes ash)

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Enthalpy and exergy analysis in the framework of a district scale energy balance

Cédric Lambiel

This report presents a study of an enthalpy and exergy analysis in the framework of a district scale energy balance. Energy demand (heating, cooling and lighting) for buildings represents more than 30 % of the total worlds energy use. Main eﬀorts have been made on increasing performances of new building envelop and on the use of low temperature processes in order to increase the exergy eﬃciency. On a district scale, diﬀerent temperature and energy ﬂow levels are present, meaning a great potential to make use of synergetic eﬀects by rationally managing energy ﬂow interactions between buildings as synergies by enhanced energy management and the usability of waste heat source. An optimisation of exergy ﬂows for the heating systems allows to identify the temperatures levels according to the energy demand, which helps to implement the best choice of available technologies. A number of connection cases will be described and studied to show the potential gain in terms of thermal and economical performances, where the thermal performances are deﬁned by both the energy and the exergy eﬃciency. This study shows an improvement of the thermal performances of connection cases where in all scenarios the heat losses are lower than the waste heat recovery. These gains on thermal performances may increase further by the integration of appropriate technologies such as heat pumps. The use of primary resource like gas can also be decreased.

2012

Design optimization of the primary coil for induction heating

Andreas Svejgaard Jensen

In this project we investigates a new design method for an optimized primary coil design for induction heating. Induction heating is used in many different application in the industry to heat up metallic materials. There could be many different reasons for the desired heating, including applications of surface treatment, preheating/postheating workpieces in a welding process or as in our specific case, to heat Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) to drive a phase change.

2021

District energy network potentials in a city territory

Raphaël Briguet

Following the Covid crisis and the war in Ukraine, the rise of fossil fuels prices demonstrates the insecurity of the supply in addition to the adverse impact it has on the environment. These crises could lead to a global shift in the strategy of building heating. Renewable systems are promising alternatives to fossil fuel heating system. One of them is the District Heating Network that has the advantages of recovering the waste heat from the industry. In the context of a neutral carbon objective set by the aluminium factory Novelis, the city of Sierre is interested in investigating the possibility of develop- ing a District Heating Network (DHN). This study develops a method to design a network between a heat source and a city, based only on open data building’s inventory. The method, applied to the case study of Sierre, shows that, coupled with heat pumps, the DHN could reduce the heating emissions of the connected buildings, between 88% and 96 % and that 50% of the Novelis’ heat is recovered when half of the city is connected to the network. In addition to that, using new generation of DHN, like CO2 based network makes possible to supply cold with the same infrastructure.

2022

AR-241: Building technology III

Ce cours traite des divers domaines techniques intervenant dans la conception et la réalisation d'un bâtiment, soit : physique du bâtiment, structures, matériaux, construction et installations techniques; ceci dans une approche globale et transversale.

ME-351: Thermodynamics and energetics II

This course will discuss advanced topics in thermodynamics with a focus on studying gas phases, mixtures, phase transformations and combustion. The application of these principles to various practical systems such as batteries, fuel cells etc. will be discussed.

CIVIL-450: Thermodynamics of comfort in buildings

This course provides an integrated approach to analyzing human indoor thermal comfort by examining the correlation between human thermoregulation, heat exchange with the indoor environment, overall and local thermal sensation of occupants.

Electric heating

Electric heating is a process in which electrical energy is converted directly to heat energy. Common applications include space heating, cooking, water heating and industrial processes. An electri

Water heating

Water heating is a heat transfer process that uses an energy source to heat water above its initial temperature. Typical domestic uses of hot water include cooking, cleaning, bathing, and space heat

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide therma