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Utilizing sewage wastewater heat in district heating systems in Serbia: effects on sustainability

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Abstract

Transformation of the heating sector is recognized as being essential for ensuring reliable and affordable energy services provided with reduced consumption of energy sources and diminished impact on the environment and less import dependency. The possibility of utilizing energy sources that otherwise would be wasted needs to be considered and treated as a big advantage of district heating systems. Despite many advantages, sewage wastewater heat is still a mostly unused resource at the global level and a totally unused energy source in Serbia, while data about the potential of this energy source are lacking. This research proposes a methodology for the determination of the technical potential of waste heat from wastewater treatment facilities for use in district heating systems by heat pump application. Data from existing wastewater treatment facilities are used for providing data for replication in cities without wastewater treatment plants but with district heating systems. An estimation of the recoverable heat energy potential of wastewater is used for evaluation of some effects that could be obtained through its full utilization for heat production in the existing district heating systems. Three groups of indicators are selected for analysis focusing on district heating systems' energy performance (primary energy factor, specific heat consumption per degree day and heating area), the security of energy supply (import dependency, Shannon–Wiener diversification index, the share of renewables) and environmental impact (carbon dioxide emission coefficient). Values of the selected indicators are determined for the current state of district heating systems and for the possible future state that could be achieved after full utilization of sewage wastewater potential. The proposed methodology is applied to Serbia, as a case study. It has been shown that all analyzed indicators for the projected future would have more preferable values compared to the values that correspond to the current state of the district heating systems. The use of this renewable energy source should provide primary energy savings of 5% per year, reduction of carbon dioxide emission of 6.5% per year, reduction of import dependency of DH systems of 9.8% and improved diversification of energy sources of 21%.

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Abbreviations

DH:

District heating

GHG:

Greenhouse gases

HP:

Heat pump

\(f_{{\text{p}}}\) :

Primary energy factor

\(E_{i}\) :

Energy content of input to the system of the ith energy carrier

\(f_{{{\text{p}},i}}\) :

Primary energy factor of the ith energy carrier

\(Q_{{{\text{ext}}}}\) :

Externally supplied heat

\(f_{{{\text{p}},{\text{ext}}}}\) :

Primary energy factor of the external heat supply

\(E_{{{\text{el,aux}} }}\) :

Auxiliary electricity

\(f_{{\text{p,el}}}\) :

Primary energy factor for electricity production

\(Q_{{{\text{del}},j}}\) :

Delivered heat to the jth consumer

q DD :

Useful annual heat supplied per degree day and heating area

DD:

Number of degree days

\(Ai\) :

Heating area of the ith consumer

Id :

Import dependency

p i :

Fraction of the ith input energy carrier/fuel in the fuel mix (\(\sum p_{i} = 1\))

\(I_{{{\text{d}},i}}\) :

Import dependency of the ith energy carrier/fuel

H :

Shannon–Wiener index

F RES :

Share of renewable energy sources

\(E_{{i,{\text{RES}}}}\) :

Energy content of input to the system of the ith renewable energy carrier

\(Q_{{\text{ext,RES}}}\) :

Externally supplied heat produced from renewables

K p,dh :

Carbon dioxide emission coefficient

\(E_{i}\) :

Energy content of input to the system of the ith energy carrier

\(K_{pi}\) :

Primary CO2 emission coefficient of the ith energy carrier

\(K_{{{\text{ext}}}}\) :

Primary CO2 emission coefficient of externally supplied heat

\(K_{{{\text{el}}}}\) :

Carbon dioxide emission coefficient of electricity

\(\dot{Q}_{{\text{w}}}\) :

Recoverable heat power-treated sewage wastewater

\(\dot{m}\) :

Mass flow of treated wastewater

\(t\) :

Temperature difference of treated wastewater at entrance and exit of heat exchanger–evaporator

\(\dot{Q}_{{\text{h}}}\) :

Thermal power of heat pumps

COP:

Coefficient of performance

\(t_{{{\text{lift}}}}\) :

Temperature deference between treated wastewater and supply water

\(Q_{{{\text{HP}}}}\) :

Heat energy produced by heat pumps

\(q_{{{\text{HP}}}}\) :

Availability of heat energy

n :

Number of inhabitants

\(q_{{{\text{PE}}}}\) :

Primary energy savings in ith DH system

PE:

Population equivalent

η :

Represents the efficiency of heat production in the existing DH system

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the Republic of Serbia, Green fund, contract number 401-00-1207/2018-05.

Funding

This research was supported by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the Republic of Serbia, Green fund, contract number 401-00-1207/2018-05.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mining and Geology, Belgrade, Serbia

    Marija Živković & Dejan Ivezić

Authors
  1. Marija Živković
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  2. Dejan Ivezić
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Contributions

Marija Živković was involved in conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing. Dejan Ivezić performed conceptualization, formal analysis, supervision, writing—review & editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dejan Ivezić.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Živković, M., Ivezić, D. Utilizing sewage wastewater heat in district heating systems in Serbia: effects on sustainability. Clean Techn Environ Policy 24, 579–593 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-021-02063-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-021-02063-6

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