Available online 26 February 2013
Publication year: 2013
Source:Building and Environment
Assessing the atmospheric environmental impacts of district heating (DH) systems is of increasing importance as the environmental concerns and the eco-sustainability concept is more and more widespread in the energy sector around the world. However, this issue has been overlooked to some extent for past decades in China, which led to inappropriate assessments only by measuring pollutant emissions per unit floor area or unit heat supply. In this paper, we present an atmospheric environmental assessment model incorporating the state of the art AERMOD modeling and the concept of normalized population distribution weights (NPDWs) to compute the mean spatial distribution (MSD) of pollutants for qualitatively evaluating the atmospheric environmental impacts of DH. We demonstrate the model in assessing different heating scenarios, characterized by basic heat load ratio in a real-life combined district heating system of Daqing city with a population of 2.7 million. The results show that the presented model and MSD concentrations furnish a better base to assess the atmospheric environmental impact. We also show how the combined district heating system can undertake a part of CO2 emission reduction burden in the DH sector at a city-scale.
► Atmospheric environmental impact of a combined heating system is studied. ► An assessment model based on AERMOD is proposed. ► Population distribution is taken into account in the model. ► Mean spatial distribution of pollutants are proposed to measure the impact. ► Combined heating systems using gas-fired boilers are environmentally efficient.
Publication year: 2013
Source:Building and Environment