Boiler Fuel Type / Hot Water Pipe Properties

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Hi everyone :)
I am a new user and modelling a district heating system. Probably my questions are easy, but i couldnt solve the problems.
1- I define boiler but the fuel type must be coal. However, Equest doesnt let me get the results for coal. It simulates as natural gas. Even i create new fuel meter for coal and select it on boil properties. How can i get the results for coal? (Maybe it is related to pic1. But there is no other choice except Natural Gas )
2- As i mentioned before, this is a district heating system and there are 6 residential villas. Combined Heat Power Plant supplies the hot water and it is located very far away. I wanna see the effect of pipe lenght, dimension and insulataion material of the hot water pipes. So, how can i enter the pipes and their properties?

Sincerely.
H. Tu??in KIRANT

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Joined: 2016-07-15
Reputation: 400

I don't personally know the answer to your question on the fuel source coal
vs. natural gas.

Regarding the 2nd question on simulation of piping pressure and thermal
losses; these modelling software programs do not model these energy losses.
They don't "care" where your central utility plant is physically located in
relation to your load. They make the assumption that you have properly
sized pipelines, insulation etc. EQuest is only attempting to estimate the
fuel consumption of meeting the building's heating and cooling load, not
assess the pipe sizing and insulation condition.

David Berty, P.E.
Baseline Energy Consulting
317.220.9272
On Jun 7, 2016 9:18 AM, "Tu??in K?rant"
wrote:

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Sir:
If you are familiar with the DETAIL-EDIT mode, place your project in that Mode (after making a copy of it to stay in Wizard mode) - by all means give it another name to avoid confusion.
On the Horizontal Tab that says UTILITIES and ECONOMICS, you can then go to the tree hierarchy on the left side of the page. Go to subfolder FUEL-METER and click on. The main screen now displays FUEL-METER attributes. Now if you click FUel Meter Type, Coal will appear. Make sure the Btu/unit is what you expect from your Coal, as i understand there are several types in use.
Hope this helps.
John R. Aulbach, PELos Angeles, CA?

I don't personally know the answer to your question on the fuel source coal vs. natural gas.Regarding the 2nd question on simulation of piping pressure and thermal losses; these modelling software programs do not model these energy losses. They don't "care" where your central utility plant is physically located in relation to your load. They make the assumption that you have properly sized pipelines, insulation etc. EQuest is only attempting to estimate the fuel consumption of meeting the building's heating and cooling load, not assess the pipe sizing and insulation condition.David Berty, P.E.
Baseline Energy Consulting
Hi everyone :)
I am a new user and modelling a district heating system. Probably my questions are easy, but i couldnt solve the problems.
1- I define boiler but the fuel type must be coal. However, Equest doesnt let me get the results for coal. It simulates as natural gas. Even i create new fuel meter for coal and select it on boil properties. How can i get the results for coal? (Maybe it is related to pic1. But there is no other choice except Natural Gas )
? ??2- As i mentioned before, this is a district heating system and there are 6 residential villas.?Combined Heat Power Plant supplies the hot water and it is located very far away.?I wanna see the effect of pipe lenght, dimension and insulataion material of the hot water pipes. So,??how can i enter the pipes and their properties?

Sincerely.
H. Tu??in KIRANT
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I might add something contrarian, but this does require getting past wizards and into detailed edits per John?s advice:

eQuest can certainly be used to assess distribution losses. If you are willing/able to determine a reasonable assessment of pipe area and average insulation level (U*A), eQuest can actually determine on an hourly basis the losses in that circulation loop (U*A*dT). For this you can choose between a few different loop ?locations? which will vary how the delta in temperatures is assessed each hour. Suggest further reading up on the inputs located here in detailed mode:

Fair counterpoint: piping/distribution losses are (for reasonable reasons) deliberately excluded from common modes of code compliance simulation and the performance rating method (i.e. LEED, Appendix G), which are generally focused upon ?design side? simulation/validation modeling and typically are trying to avoid such realities in an effort to minimize ?arbitrary? penalization (i.e. why must my distributed campus with necessarily larger distribution losses have a harder go at meeting threshold XYZ?). In turn such inputs don?t get a ton of attention from that side of our industry.

Further, once you?re looking at the ?rainbow reports,? note the ?gas? consumption/demand charts really more generically mean to reference ?Fuel.? The numbers should be analogous (if with slightly different rounding sometimes) to the PS-E report for ?all fuel meters,? IIRC.

You can also directly edit those titles for presentation if need be by right-clicking the chart for a context menu ? it?s in one of the tabs there ;).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nick Caton, P.E.

Senior Energy Engineer
Energy and Sustainability Services
North America Operations
Schneider Electric

D 913.564.6361
M 785.410.3317
E nicholas.caton at schneider-electric.com
F 913.564.6380

15200 Santa Fe Trail Drive
Suite 204
Lenexa, KS 66219
United States

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Hello again,
First of all, i wanna thank all of you for your interests.
For pipe losses i will use your method Nicholas. It sounds as a reasonable solution for my problem.
However, I have problems about fuel type, still. When I click fuel type to change it to coal, it gives me warning as in picture:
and i say ok. Then it gives me another warning : again i say ok to see what will happen and simulate it. As a result it doesnt give the results and the error is: As i mentioned before, on the HW plant Equipment settings, it just gives me option for natural gas :/ I attached the picture below again:

I suppose that because of this, it doesnt calculate for coal, even i changed it on Utility&Economics section.
Do you have any idea about this?
Sincerely.
Ms. H. Tu??in KIRANT

Subject: RE: [Equest-users] Boiler Fuel Type / Hot Water Pipe Properties
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 17:30:59 -0500

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Sir: Please note you are still in the WIZARD mode (see top of your screens) . THis only allows you natural gas. You must convert to the DETAIL EDIT mode, which then allows you to make the change to Coal. Did you convert to DETAIL mode? it will say MODE in the upper left area, in which you then click to DETAILED DATA EDIT and save. REMEMBER I advised you to SAVE AS another file name, such as XYZ Project-DETAIL in case something went wrong in the conversion.
JOhn

#yiv6213572660 #yiv6213572660 --.yiv6213572660hmmessage P{margin:0px;padding:0px;}#yiv6213572660 body.yiv6213572660hmmessage{font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri;}#yiv6213572660 Hello again,
First of all, i wanna thank all of you for your interests.?
For pipe losses i will use your method Nicholas. It sounds as a reasonable solution for my problem.
However, I have problems about fuel type, still. When I click fuel type to change it to coal, it gives me warning as in picture: ? ?
and i say ok. Then it gives me another warning : ? ?again i say ok to see what will happen and simulate it. As a result it doesnt give the results and the error is: ? ?As i mentioned before, on the HW plant Equipment settings, it just gives me option for natural gas :/ ?I attached the picture below again: ? ?

I suppose that because of this, it doesnt calculate for coal, even i changed it on Utility&Economics section.
Do you have any idea about this?
Sincerely.
Ms. H. Tu??in KIRANT

Subject: RE: [Equest-users] Boiler Fuel Type / Hot Water Pipe Properties
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 17:30:59 -0500

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Joined: 2016-07-15
Reputation: 400

Hello,

I think I might be able to answer at least a portion of the question. Right now, you seem to be switching between the wizards, and detailed mode. In eQuest, I am not aware of any method of adding coal meters through the wizard, but I can help with adding coal to a model in detailed mode. Just as a warning, if you switch from detailed mode back into the wizards, all of the changes you made in detailed mode will be reversed. So, make sure you have everything you wanted to do in the wizard mode finished before you dive into detailed mode.

You can switch into the detailed editing mode using the main dropdown menu.

Once you're in detailed mode, under the "Utility and Economics" tab, you can find all of the meters that you have for your building. eQuest will generate an electric meter (EM1) and a natural gas meter (FM1), that can be found in the component tree on the left hand side. Right click on the Fuel Meters folder, and select "Create Fuel Meter"

Select coal meter from the dropdown for meter type. In this example I chose to re-name it "Coal Meter"

Now that there is a meter for coal, I can assign the boiler to run on coal. Under the "Water-Side" HVAC tab, select the boiler(s) that you want to assign to run on coal. Under the "Fuel Meter" dropdown menu, select the coal meter you just created, and click done.

Now whenever you run the building simulation, your boiler will be using coal as its fuel source.

I hope that helps,

Greg

Greg Hildner, EIT, EMIT
Energy Engineer

Energy and Sustainability Services
Global Solutions

D (913) 564-6358
M (630) 380-4709
E greg.hildner at schneider-electric.com
F (913) 564-6380

15200 Santa Fe Trail Dr
Suite 204
Lenexa, Kansas
United States

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Hello,
Thank you for photos and explanations. However, as advised before i had run the simulation in detailed mode. (I created new fuel meter for coal etc.) But there occurs no change. Results are given for natural gas. The thing that makes me confused is this:
If you can see the pic, there is no other choice except "Natural Gas". I guess that this is the reason why i cant take the results for other fuel types. Because, Equest doesnt let me use another type of boiler from the beginning. When i create other fuel type, it makes no change on the results. Because Equest doesnt see any difference between the fuel types and calculates as it is natural gas. Why isnt there other option for fuel type on HW Plant Equipment Section? If i can fix this, i suppose there will be no problem any more.
Sincerely.
Ms. H. Tu??in KIRANT
Subject: RE: [Equest-users] Boiler Fuel Type / Hot Water Pipe Properties
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2016 07:01:13 -0700

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Keep in mind that different coal has different heating values.
The DOE2.2 default is 24,580,000 Btu/ton.

Coal Grade

Heating Value (Btu/Ton)

Anthracite

25,820,000

Semi-Anthracite

27,540,000

Low-volatile bituminous

28,680,000

Medium-volatile bituminous

27,680,000

High-volatile bituminous A

26,180,000

High-volatile bituminous B

24,260,000

High-volatile bituminous C

21,500,000

Sub-bituminous B

18,300,000

Sub-bituminous C

17,880,000

Lignite

13,800,000

[cid:image003.png at 01D09C46.E75BA0D0]
Christopher Jones, P.Eng.
Senior Engineer

WSP Canada Inc.
2300 Yonge Street, Suite 2300
Toronto, ON M4P 1E4
T +1 416-644-4226
F +1 416-487-9766
C +1 416-697-0056

www.wspgroup.com

Anonymous's picture
Anonymous

I believe the answers others have provided will get you to where you are trying to go. The key is to get out of the Wizard mode and into the Detailed Edit mode. In the graphic below, the title is ?eQUEST DD Wizard: HW Plant Equipment?. You are still in the Wizard mode and not in the detailed edit mode.

[cid:image003.png at 01D09C46.E75BA0D0]
Christopher Jones, P.Eng.
Senior Engineer

WSP Canada Inc.
2300 Yonge Street, Suite 2300
Toronto, ON M4P 1E4
T +1 416-644-4226
F +1 416-487-9766
C +1 416-697-0056

www.wspgroup.com

Anonymous's picture
Anonymous

Dear Christopher,
I create new fuel meter in detiled mode. I am okey with it. But the problem is; "HW Plant Equipment" section just gives me "Natural gas" as fuel type. AND, I cant enter this section when i am in Detailed edit mode:
This is why i am stuck, unfortunately. If there is a new idea, i am open to it.
Waiting for helps.
H. Tu??in KIRANT

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