Decarbonizing UBC’s District Energy System : District Energy Heat Pump Technology
department or school: Applied Science, Faculty of
data provider: DSpace
contributor: University of British Columbia. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
contributor: University of British Columbia. Energy and Water Services
contributor: University of British Columbia. Campus and Community Planning
creator: Viswanathan, Thivya
issued: 2020-07-29T22:00:22Z
issued: 2019-12-31
description: UBC is working on initiatives to meet its climate action target of achieving carbon neutrality by the year 2050. A major percentage of UBC’s GHG emissions occur in buildings operations, specifically, in space heating and domestic hot water heating to meet the thermal demand of the campus. Though UBC’s steam power plant for campus heating has been replaced with natural gas boilers of high efficiency and biomass plants that utilize clean wood waste, there is still a significant amount of GHG emissions released during the operation of natural gas boilers. Hence, there is a need to reduce the reliance on natural gas for district heating to aid GHG emissions reduction on campus. Integrating renewable sources of energy such as sea water heat pumps into UBC’s District Energy System (DES) can be one possible solution to reduce or eliminate the fossil-fuel reliance for district heating. Four different sea water heat pump technologies were studied that could meet the thermal demand of the campus, and the operating temperature of the DES. Each heat pump was integrated separately into the business as usual model, and the related energy consumption, operational costs and GHG emissions were analysed and compared with the business as usual scenario from the year 2024 till 2050. The business as usual scenario consists of the natural gas boilers, the biomass plant, the new biomass expansion plant to be installed by 2024 and the cogeneration plant. The new model consists of all these facilities along with the sea water heat pump unit. By comparing both the models technically and financially, the GHG emissions savings, operational expenses savings, the payback periods, and other financial parameters were calculated. It was observed that the heat pumps contributed to around 32% to 83% of GHG reduction when compared with the base case under different carbon tax scenarios. There was also notable reduction in operational expenses from the business as usual scenario. However, one major fin…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/75337
note: UBC Social Ecological Economic Development Studies (SEEDS) Sustainability Program Student Research Report Decarbonizing UBC’s District Energy System: District Energy Heat Pump Technology Thivya Viswanathan University of British Columbia APPP 506 Themes: Buildings, Energy, Water Date: Dec 31, 2019 Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS Sustainability Program provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student research project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore, readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Sustainability Program representative about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report”. APPP 506C 103 DECARBONIZING UBC’S DISTRICT ENERGY SYSTEM – DISTRICT ENERGY HEAT PUMP TECHNOLOGY PREPARED FOR UBC SEEDS & ENERGY AND WATER SERVICES BY THIVYA VISWANATHAN 1 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 5 2. Purpose ............................................................................................................................................... 6 3. Objectives ............................................................................................................................................ 6 4. Background ......................................................................................................................................... 7 4.1. UBC Energy & Water Services ...................................................................................................... 7 4.1.1. Cogeneration unit ..................................................................................................…
has type: Report
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0392608
language: eng
peer review status: Unreviewed
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
is part of: UBC Social Ecological Economic Development Studies (SEEDS) Student Report
is part of: University of British Columbia. APPP 506
subject: Buildings
subject: Energy
subject: Water
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/75337