District heating system analysis and challenges within the urban transformation of Kiruna

There is currently an ongoing urban transformation in a small Swedish town named Kiruna, it is located in the very north of Sweden well above the Arctic Circle in a sub-arctic climate. Large part of the town will be relocated due to the ground deformation that is caused by the progressing iron ore mining activity and it is affecting all infrastructures of the town. This thesis aims to accomplish a holistic analysis on the district heating (DH) system for the town of Kiruna and its future challenges. Energy companies with a DH system recognize the importance in having a good understanding about the network characteristics, for obtaining an efficient and stabile heat delivery to the end-users. In this thesis, a method for modeling and simulation of meshed DH networks is described, that makes it possible to study and analyze the flow pattern in order to locate non-obvious paths, bottlenecks and overloaded pipes. For carrying out the DH simulations a fundamental input is to set the thermal losses for each pipe segment in the model, a fictitious series with all pipe diameters is created which corresponds to the annual losses in the real network. In comparison with the pipes series manufactured today the created one is best described by the series with least insulation and highest thermal losses. The studied network has its origin in the 60th and is the sum of the different piping technics that has been valid over time, this mixture is positioning the thermal performance as a close to a worst-case scenario. To the meshed DH network a number of heat production sites are connected for delivering the thermal requested by the end-users, each site consisting of several boilers and using different resources. A hybrid evolutionary-Mixed Integer Linear Programing (MILP) optimization approach is developed and applied for finding the cost-optimal heat production for three scenarios in combination of two heating demand levels. It is stated that no matter the geographically location of the site the cheapest resource should always be favorable as fuel, in the case when the same resource is viable at different sites a differentiated heat production is obtained. The supply temperature from each site is found to be the one lowest possible in order to serve all site-concerned end-users with a temperature level high enough for hot water production. The findings recommend a network temperatures reduction with the consequence in higher cost related to pumping work, but is lower than the savings due to the reduction in thermal losses. In order to provide the relocated part of the town with DH the hybrid evolutionary-MILP optimization routine is reshaped for finding different alternatives for network expansion layouts. The result is presented as a multi objective analysis between the operation cost and installation cost, showing the complete spectra of all optimal possible solutions and how the different cost correlate to each other. In this way, the outcome can be used for support in decision making, helping network owners is their planning and pipe sizing for new areas. For constructing the buildings that will populate the new city-area the Swedish government has stated a number of recommendations for achieving livable thermal indoor climate. An investigation is carried out analyzing the impact from the usage of three different heating system; air/air heat pump, air heating and floor heating in a low energy family house, where the first two system are aimed to use heat from the DH network. The analysis show that only the floor heating system satisfies the recommendations stated, but with carefully planning an air heating system could also fulfill the recommendations. Further, a techno-economical evaluation declares that the cheapest heating cost over 30 years is by using an air/air heat pump. In order to make DH competitive as heating source the needed price reduction is found for the hydronic floor and air heating system. Finally, three different building energy performance scenarios are studied in conjunction with the urban transformation in combination with the suggested energy measures from the Energy Performance certificates (EPC). In order to reach the national target entailing a reduction of 50% until 2050 all re-built buildings have to be built with passive standard and all advised measures in the EPC has to be carried out. Wort noticing is that the scenarios is analyzed as part of a 3-D City Model, which is found to be a worthwhile working tool for staff dealing with energy related issues