Matteo Marchisio
ASSESSMENT OF FEASIBLE OPERATING TEMPERATURE REDUCTION IN TURIN’S DISTRICT HEATING NETWORK.
Rel. Elisa Guelpa, Martina Capone. Politecnico di Torino, Corso di laurea magistrale in Ingegneria Energetica E Nucleare, 2025
Abstract
The purpose of this work is to present a feasibility study on lowering the operating temperature of the district heating network of Turin, managed by IREN SpA. Reducing the network’s operating temperature is necessary to achieve the European decarbonization targets for the energy sector by 2050. Indeed, this would allow the replacement of current fossil-fuel-based technologies with innovative solutions that exploit waste heat and heat pumps. Lowering the temperature difference between the supply and return lines of the network implies an increase in water mass flow rates to maintain constant thermal power. Therefore, a model was created to first simulate the current operation of the network: by verifying the mass conservation and momentum conservation equations at each node and branch, the pressure, flow rate, and velocity profiles in the network were obtained, ensuring the fulfilment of the loads at all major network hubs.
This model was then “evolved” into an optimization model, in which the maximum possible increase in flow rates was evaluated while respecting the physical and operational limits of the current network, imposed as maximum and minimum pressure and velocity values
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