Research Proposal SIPII

Title: Name student: Student number: First faculty supervisor: Second faculty supervisor: Official SIP II period: Official Graduation period: Collective heat and cool systems which are interlinked energetically with the built environment Waerdt, J.M.E. van de (Jorik) 0551273 prof.ir. P.G.S. Rutten ir. G. van Boxem 30-08-2010 till 29-10-2010 November 2010 till June 2011

Assignment Definition
The Dutch built environment is responsible for 40% of the total energy consumption. In the year 2050 the Netherlands want to have the biggest part of this built environment energy neutral. The energy infrastructure for the built environment at this moment consists most of the time of electricity cables and gas pipelines. An interesting option in the Netherlands with relative short distances is the use of collective heat and cool source for the built environment. This heating and/or cooling energy must be transported to dwellings, office buildings and other heat and cooling energy consumers. Applying district heating network can make the heating and cooling energy use more efficient and can replace the gas supply network in the end. The problem of using a collective heat source by a district energy network is the quality of the heat and the low efficient heat supply to the built environment. So, the heat source and the heat supply must satisfy certain quality to apply this in the built environment. This SIP II project will be performed on the availability of heating and cooling sources where to a district will be interlinked energetically. The SIP II project will be used as preparation on the graduation project about the energy infrastructures for energy neutral districts. The main focus here is to investigate what the requirements are to apply a district heating system with the use energy sources and when this is feasible in comparison with the individual heating and cooling systems. After completing the SIP II project it is the intension to formulate a graduation proposal about an encountered problem during the SIP II project.

Research question
The assignment definition leads to a main research question, which can be divided in a couple of sub questions. The main question is: When is it feasible to interlink heating and cooling sources energetically with the built environment? Answering the sub questions will lead to answering the main research question and will show the order of investigation chronologically. The sub questions are: 1. What are the available heating and cooling sources? 2. What is the quality of the heating and cooling energy of these sources? 3. What are the possibilities to interlink energetically the heating sources with the built environment? 4. Where can this heating and cooling energy be used for in the built environment? 5. What are the parameters where the choice for collective heating sources depends on?

Research Objective
The objectives for this SIP II project are: Make an overview of the different heating and cooling sources arranged by their characteristics of their heating and cooling energy Make an overview of the different users of heating and cooling energy Make a sensitivity study with a calculation model

Scientific relevance of the research

As said in the assignment definition it is the aim of the Netherlands to get the built environment energy neutral in the year 2050. The use of collective heating and cooling systems can play an important role to reach this goal, but applying needs certain requirements. This can only be done if there are possibilities to solve that and a tool is designed to judge if there really is an efficient of collective systems. If a sort of methodology can be designed to solve this problem, this would have much scientific relevance.

SET relevance of the research

The use of collective heating and cooling systems is part of the Trias Energetica philosophy. It is an efficient way of using renewable energy sources or using fossil fuels as efficient as possible. It is obvious that this very relevant to the program of the master Sustainable Energy Technology.

Research Methods
To make an overview of different collective systems and user a literature study will be done during the first period of the SIP II project. The research to parameters will be done mainly with a sensitivity study with an already developed model. This model is developed by PhD-student ir. Rona C. P. Vreenegoor at the department of Building Physics and Simulation. This project will give her more information about collective systems and with the sensitivity study the model will be tested.

General Planning
The general planning for the SIP II project and graduation research is shown below.