Community cooling infrastructure from waste heat among diverse building types in Rourkela Steel Township, India

Urban building energy modeling is an important field in the current decade due to the rising rate of urbanization, specifically in developing countries. The UN environment is promoting urban level space cooling approaches in the upcoming smart cities of India. Rourkela is a tier-2 steel township included within the ‘smart city’ mission in India and houses one of the largest Steel Plants of India, classified under Koppen Aw tropical climate zone. However it experiences extreme heat stress in the dry summer season before the onset of monsoons. The given study proposes an alternative cooling scenario utilizing waste heat from the rolling mill with which cooling in the range of 700-900 tons of nearly zero energy cooling can be made available in the surrounding areas, otherwise catered by an energy intensive cooling system reporting a COP of 2.45. This study can be further expanded to provide cooling to the nearby residential communities keeping the steel plant area as center point for community cooling infrastructure provision.

A study on heat transfer load in large space buildings with stratified air-conditioning systems based on building energy modeling: Model validation and load analysis

The characteristics of heat transfer load from the non-air-conditioned (NAC) area can help to understand the complex airflow movement and thermal physical mechanisms inside large space buildings. Based on building energy modeling, the indoor thermal environment and building energy consumption of a plant for computerized numerical control (CNC) machine tools are studied. Considering the form of the stratified air-conditioning system and the phenomenon of heat retention near the roof in the plant, the double zone and triple zone models are established. The vertical air temperature, the parameters of the terminal of the air-conditioning system and the heat/cool source system of the plant in summer and winter were measured on site, which verifies the accuracy of the established model. Based on the validated model, the proportion of heat transfer load from the NAC area is calculated, at the range of about 60%–85%. The positive influence of the roof heat transfer coefficient on the sensible heat load in the NAC area is revealed. The recommended value of the non-dimensional zone-mixing flow rate between the air-conditioned (AC) and NAC areas is given, with 30% (in summer). The results of this work can help understand the composition of the stratified air-conditioning load in large spaces and optimize the design of air distribution.