RP-141 -- Simulation of Flows and Temperatures in Central Chilled Water Systems PDF

In buildings or facilities with large chilled water cooling loads it is common to locate large-scale refrigerating equipment in central locations. Such locations allow the use of equipment which has been sized to take advantage of load diversity which may be caused by building exposures, occupancy variations, or maufacturing process schedules. One plant may be used to provide chilled water for part of a building, an entire building or several buildings. The words "large-scale" make certain implications.

First, the systems are large in terms of component size and point-to-point dimension. Second, the costs involved with building, maintaining, or alterring such systems are large. From the first point one could conclude that tracing system problems is a tedious process with many complications. From the second point one could conclude that great care must be taken to prevent a costly error in the design phase.

With these and other system concerns in mind the investigators embarked on a project to provide a tool for the designers, operators, and owners of central chilled water systems. The result of the project is a steady-state computer simulation which is the topic of this report and the theses of several other graduate students over the past eight years.