Environmental impact assessment of building energy systems

Abstract

This chapter deals with energy/exergy and environmental analyses of a low exergy heating system. A building with a volume of about 392 m<inf>3</inf>and a floor area of 140 m<inf>2</inf>is presented as a case study. For this building four different heating options are investigated namely (1) electric boiler (2) ground heat pump system (3) standard boiler and (4) solar collector. In this regard an energy and exergy analysis is employed to assess their performances and compare them through energy and exergy efficiencies. Also CO<inf>2</inf> NO<inf>x</inf> SO<inf>2</inf>emissions of the considered systems are determined and compared with each other. Overall exergy efficiencies of the heating systems are found to be 4.0 10.1 7.6 and 35.7 %. CO<inf>2</inf> NO<inf>x</inf> SO<inf>2</inf>emissions rate per year (kg emission/year) calculated for considered cases as 10726.32 4224.17 3737.56 and 337.67 11.14 4.39 3.40 and 3.35 and 116.34 45.82 3.68 and 3.66 respectively. The lowest environmental impact is provided by case 4. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.