Online Leakage Attribution to Exclusion Areas Prototype Application

Abstract

Localisation of leakages within district heating networks is a challenging but highly essential task. In case of a leakage, especially in sudden cases, there occur miscellaneous adverse effects. In any case, the lost medium must be fed back to the network. If the amount of lost medium is too large, it is inevitable to shut down the network. This can be prevented by the use of exclusion areas if these can separate the damaged parts of the network. However, in order to effectively use these exclusion areas, the leakage must be attributed to one or more exclusion areas as quickly as possible.One possible approach is based on the propagation of the pressure wave, which may arise as an initial reaction to the occurrence of a leakage. The first step of the prototype presented here is to recognise the leakage entry based on the measurement data. Subsequently, all pressure measurement data are evaluated to find the point in time at which these pressures dropped due to leakage. It is not possible to deduct the leakage position on the basis of these times directly as the data quality meets the operational requirements but is far too low. The prototype can use these time points despite their big errors. For all possible leakage positions the theoretical wave propagation is calculated taking into account the valve states. The leakage is attributed to the exclusion area where the theoretical wave propagation fits best.Leakages within a real district heating network were simulated to test and evaluate the prototype. For example, about five percent of the transport medium of the network was replenished within a time span of one and a half hours. We present the results of the prototype based on these real data.