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This article presents a complex and exhaustive review of the integration of renewable energy sources (RES) (specifically solar, geothermal, and hydraulic energies and heat pumps (HPs)) and the improvement of water pumping in district heating systems (DHSs) focused on low-temperature systems, to increase energy efficiency and environmental protection. For this aim, the main components of a DHS and the primary RES with applications in DHSs were described briefly. Finally, several case studies regarding the DHS in Timisoara, Romania, were analysed. Thus, by integrating water source HP (WSHP) systems in cooperation with solar thermal and photovoltaic (PV) collectors and reducing the supply temperature from 110 °C to 30 °C in DHS, which supplies the water radiators to consumers in a district of this city in a 58/40 °C regime of temperatures and produces domestic hot water (DHW) required by consumers at 52 °C, a thermal energy saving of 75%, a reduction in heat losses on the transmission network of 90% and a diminution of CO2 emissions of 77% were obtained. Installed PV panels generate 1160 MWh/year of electricity that is utilised to balance the electricity consumption of HP systems. Additionally, mounting pumps as turbines (PATs) for the recovery of excess hydraulic energy in the entire heating network resulted in electricity production of 378 MW, and the variable frequency drive's (VFD) method for speed control for a heating station pump resulted in roughly 38% more energy savings than the throttle control valve technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing accurate models is necessary to optimize the operation of heating systems. A large number of field measurements from monitored heat pumps have made it possible to evaluate different heat pump models and improve their accuracy. This study used measured data from a heating system consisting of three heat pumps to compare five regression and two artificial neural network (ANN) models. The models' performance was compared to determine which model was suitable during the design and operation stage by calibrating them using data provided by the manufacturer and the measured data. A method to refine the ANN model was also presented. The results indicate that simple regression models are more suitable when only manufacturers' data are available, while ANN models are more suited to utilize a large amount of measured data. The method to refine the ANN model is effective at increasing the accuracy of the model. The refined models have a relative root mean square error (RMSE) of less than 5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to modify an existing liquid desiccant and indirect/direct evaporative cooling-assisted 100% outdoor air system (LD-IDECOAS) for humidification operation in winter. The energy benefit of the liquid desiccant-assisted humidification approach during the operation of LD-IDECOAS over the conventional method with a steam humidifier was evaluated through a detailed energy simulation. The humidification and enthalpy effectiveness values of the liquid desiccant humidification measured from laboratory tests were 0.41 and 0.49, respectively, which were applied to the energy simulation for the modified system. Both systems with the proposed and conventional humidification approaches were simulated using an engineering equation solver combined with a TRNSYS 18 energy simulation program. The results demonstrated that the modified LD-IDECOAS consumes less energy for humidification compared to the existing system with a steam humidifier. The proposed system also exhibited considerable heating energy-saving potential. Consequently, modified LD-IDECOAS consumed 42% less primary energy during winter operation after being modified for liquid desiccant-assisted humidification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]