Abstract
More than one third of the world’s primary energy demand refers to residential sector. Heating is considered as one of the main part of the energy consumption in buildings. In this study, a thermodynamic sustainability assessment analysis of different energy sources for heating of residential building, with net floor heated area of 162 m2, for Belgrade weather data, was presented. Five options of energy sources were studied, namely: coal, natural gas, electricity, district heating and air-water heat pump. Energy and exergy analyses were conducted and appropriate efficiencies were determined. Energy and exergy flows in boundaries of the building and in the whole chain from primary to final values were analyzed. The environmental impact factor and exergetic sustainability index were determined for all considered energy sources. The exergy efficiency is very low in all analyzed cases, which further implies poor thermodynamic compatibility of energy quality from the supplied side and the energy used for building heating. It was shown that the highest exergy efficiency is for the case of heat pump utilization (about 6%), due to the energy used from environment. The minimum environmental impact factor (15.37) and maximum exergetic sustainability index (0.065) were found for the case of heat pump utilization.
Highlights
Residential sector is a large consumer of energy, with a share more than 40%, according to the European Commission data [1]
From fig. 3 and fig.4, it can be noted that, generally, the exergy efficiency is very low in all cases, which further implies a poor thermodynamic compatibility of energy quality from the supplied side and the energy used for building heating
Energy and exergy analyses were conducted for five different heating options of residential building in order to asses sustainability and environmental impact
Summary
Residential sector is a large consumer of energy, with a share more than 40%, according to the European Commission data [1]. Heating systems are considered as one of the main part of the energy consumers in buildings. Energy utilization for thermodynamically efficient and environmentally friendly heating is very important for the development of the sustainable energy systems. A large part of the total energy is used as a low quality heat at relatively low temperatures. The largest part of this energy is produced from high quality primary energy sources, such as natural gas, coal, oil, etc. The energy analysis is not capable to illustrate this discrepancy between the quality of the energy on the supply side and on the side of use. Exergy analysis clearly shows this mismatch as a thermodynamic discrepancy
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