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From laboratory to on-site operation: Reevaluation of empirically based electric water chiller models

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Abstract

Chiller model is a key factor to building energy simulation and chiller performance prediction. With spread of new types of electric water chillers that have higher performance and wider operating range, new challenges have been faced by building energy simulation tools and their chiller models. This work takes a new type of electric water chiller as a case study and reevaluates eight typical empirically based models for predicting the energy performance of electric water chiller to verify whether they are suitable for the new type of chiller, using both laboratory test data from chiller manufacturer and online monitoring data from on-site operation of a central cooling plant with chillers of the same type. The prediction ability of the chiller models (including model prediction accuracy and generation ability) in laboratory test and on-site operation situations are examined. The results show that the existing models can well describe the chiller performance in the laboratory test situation but perform poorly in the on-site operation situation. As the best two models in the laboratory dataset, the overall prediction errors of DOE-2 and GN model increase more than 250% and 75% respectively in the field dataset. The big discrepancy of model prediction accuracy in the two situations is mainly due to the differences of evaporator and condenser water flow rates between the laboratory and on-site operation datasets, which indicates the limitations of the empirical chiller models and implies further research in future in order to improve the suitability and reliability of chiller model.

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Abbreviations

c w :

water specific heat (= 4.2 kJ/(kg·K))

CAPFT:

cooling capacity factor of chiller, equal to 1 at reference conditions

COP:

coefficient of performance of chiller

CV:

coefficient of variation

EIRFPLR:

energy input to cooling output factor of chiller at part-load conditions, i.e., part-load efficiency

EIRFT:

energy input to cooling output factor of chiller at full-load conditions, i.e., full-load efficiency

M c :

condenser water flow rate of chiller (L/s)

M e :

evaporator water flow rate of chiller (L/s)

M c,total :

cooling water flow of main pipe (L/s)

M e,total :

chilled water flow of main pipe (L/s)

P :

compressor work input of chiller (kW)

P ref :

compressor work input of chiller at reference conditions (kW)

PLR:

part-load ratio of chiller, equal to cooling load divided by the available chiller capacity adjusted for current fluid temperatures

Q c :

condenser cooling capacity of chiller (kW)

Q e :

cvaporator cooling capacity of chiller (kW)

Q e,ref :

evaporator cooling capacity of chiller at reference conditions (kW)

R 2 :

coefficient of determination

T ci :

condenser inlet water temperature of chiller (K or °C)

T co :

condenser outlet water temperature of chiller (K or °C)

T ei :

evaporator inlet water temperature of chiller (K or °C)

T eo :

evaporator outlet water temperature of chiller (K or °C)

T cr :

inlet water temperature of cooling towers (K or °C)

T cs :

outlet water temperature of cooling towers (K or °C)

T r :

return temperature of chilled water (K or °C)

T s :

supply temperature of chilled water (K or °C)

ρ w :

water density (=1.0 kg/L)

Õ :

relative error indicator

lab:

laboratory test data

field:

on-site monitoring data

p:

predicted value by an empirical chiller model

m:

measured value

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the State Key Laboratory of Air-Conditioning Equipment and System Energy Conservation (No. ACSKL2019KT13), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51608297 and No. 51678024), Scientific Research Project of Beijing Municipal Education Commission (No. KM201910016009 and No. KZ202110016022), Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Urban Design (No. UDC2019011121) and Fundamental Research Funds for Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture (No. X18301).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Bin Zhang & Shijun You

  2. State Key Laboratory of Air-Conditioning Equipment and System Energy Conservation, Zhuhai, 519070, China

    Sheng Wang

  3. Guangdong Key Laboratory of Refrigeration Equipment and Energy Conservation Technology, Zhuhai, 519070, China

    Sheng Wang

  4. Beijing Key Laboratory of Heating, Gas Supply, Ventilating and Air Conditioning Engineering, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing, 100044, China

    Xiaoxiao Ding, Chuang Wang & Yan Gao

  5. Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Urban Design, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing, 100044, China

    Xiaoxiao Ding, Chuang Wang & Yan Gao

Authors
  1. Bin Zhang
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  2. Shijun You
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  3. Sheng Wang
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  4. Xiaoxiao Ding
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  5. Chuang Wang
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  6. Yan Gao
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Correspondence to Sheng Wang or Chuang Wang.

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Zhang, B., You, S., Wang, S. et al. From laboratory to on-site operation: Reevaluation of empirically based electric water chiller models. Build. Simul. 15, 213–232 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-021-0797-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-021-0797-4

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