BELLA COSTA

THE PRIVACY CONDO

  PLUM CONDO (PHASE 1)

Nowadays, the energy efficiency in any solutions is become one of the imperative approach for various designs especially in air conditioning systems in any type of buildings.  District cooling design, which is one of the best solutions for large mixed-use project delivers many beneficial aspects such as energy-efficient, cost-effective, and environmental friendly.  Moreover, because of centralizing cooling production as district cooling, the system has already provided diverse benefits, which include reduction of maintenance cost, deduction of cooling generating plant space, and economizing the installed capacity.

The District Cooling is:

Generally, the district cooling system, DCS, is the large central cooling plant, which generates enormous volume of chilled water and deliver to multiple buildings in its coverage areas.  The piping distribution network is usually installed underground in order to connects between central plant and buildings.  The individual building will purchase chilled water from the DCS plant based on its operations without installing their own chiller plants.  Each building requires their own the secondary loop including secondary pumps, internal building distribution piping network, and air terminal units so that they can use chilled water from DCS central plant as their requirement.  Comparing with traditional air-cooled and individual water-cooled with cooling tower systems, the DCS can deduct the energy consuming around 35%-20% respectively. 

The Major of District Cooling Components:

Practically, the DCS is comprised of 3 major components, Central Chiller Plant, Distribution Network, and Energy Transfer Station.

Normally, chilled water at the central chiller plant is generated by using multiple large and efficient electric chillers, absorption chillers, or free cooling from deep lakes, rivers, or oceans. When the DCS combines with multiple chillers, the system will take advantage of the economy of scale and cooling generating diversity between buildings in the district area.  Moreover, the central DCS plant has already included chilled water pumps so as to deliver chilled water from main plant to other buildings called primary loop. 

Distribution Network:

DCS distributes chilled water from cooling source to individual energy transfer station by using piping network so that the system can extract heat from individual building and reject them at the main plant.  This chilled water circulation results from distribution pumps in the DCS plant.  Most of the cases, the distribution network is usually installed in underground route line.

Energy Transfer Station:

The energy transfer station is the user station which is installed in an individual building.  In each energy transfer station, it has devices called Heat exchangers, which play an important role in transferring heat between primary loop from DCS and secondary loop from building air-conditioning systems.  The secondary loop can be equipped with air terminal equipment such as fan coil units or air handling units, or utilized with multiple heat exchangers depending on design techniques.