Open position
Type: Semester project (10 credits)
Period: Spring 2018
Assistant: Victor Codina Gironès
Context:
District heating (DH) is a centralized technology used for the supply of space heating and hot water in densely populated areas. In European countries such as Sweden, DH has already been largely developed: 55% of buildings heating requirements are supplied by DH systems. Other countries present considerable potentials for its deployment, for example, in France only about the 3% of the building are connected to a DH.
The implementation of DH networks allows the usage of efficient technologies for the production of heat, such as cogeneration systems or water-water heat pumps. As example, the EPFL campus is heated by a water-water heat pump using the lake as heat source. The heat pump system is supported by a cogeneration system, which is used during cold days.
The goal of this project is to propose a set of scenarios for the evolution of the DH technology in the EU-28 countries plus Switzerland (EU-28+). The scenarios must consider the construction of new DH networks and their corresponding heat supply. The use of efficient heat sources such as waste heat from industry, or lakes must be taken into account.
Tasks:
- Analysis of the existing data:
- Determining the maximum level of deployment for DH networks.
- Inventory of efficient heat sources.
- Development of a thermo-economic model integrating the gathered data.
- Creation of a set of DH deployment scenarios using the developed model.
Requirements:
Desired skills are:
- Good domain of Excel.
- Good domain of MATLAB is recommended.