Hydraulic Modeling of Large District Cooling Systems for Master Planning Purposes

District Cooling Systems (DCS) have been widely applied in large institutions such as universities, government facilities, commercial districts, airports etc. The hydraulic system of a large DCS can be very complicated. They often stem from an original design that has had extensive additions and deletions over time. Expanding or retrofitting such a system involves large capital investment. Consideration of future expansion is often required. Therefore, a thorough study of the whole system at the planning phase is crucial. An effective hydraulic model for the existing DCS will become a powerful analysis tool for this purpose. Engineers can use the model to explore various alternatives of system configuration to find an optimal way of accommodating the DCS hydraulic system to the planned future. This paper presents the first complete procedure for the use of commercial simulation software to construct the hydraulic model for a large District Cooling System (DCS). A model for one of the largest DCS hydraulic systems in the United States has been developed based on this procedure and has been successfully utilized to assist the decision makings for its master planning purpose.