Underground Piping Software

[gator1991]

Does anybody know about any good underground piping software. I need to analysis a chilled water underground piping and if I can get a good software that would be great. My chilled water piping is about 5 feet in the ground and is located in Cincinnati. I have the initial temperature, the size and material of the piping, etc and I need to get the temperature at different length in the piping. I also would like to compare the energy saving using insulation for the piping.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Tremolo]

gator1991,

We have developed pipe flow software that will calculate the pipe and fluid temperatures along the length of the pipe for either steady state or transient flows.

The software couples transient fluid flow equations and pipe wall transient conduction/convection models. So we can get accurate calculations of heat loss/gain along the length of the pipe.

The software also includes heat exchanger models or allows you to add constant heat loads at any location along the pipeline.

I am curious about the total length of pipe you are interested in analyzing and the number of pipe branches, etc. There may also be some hand calculations you can use.

If you would like more information, let me know. I would be glad to help.

Have a nice day.


TREMOLO
(a.k.a BearCat1986)

 

[gator1991]

Thanks Tremolo for your quick response...
I have an underground chilled water piping that goes underground in Cincinnati, Ohio. It goes about 5 feet underground.
The total length that I want to analyze is 125 feet total.
The first 85 feet of piping are 20" Cast Iron and the rest of the piping is 16" I have a couple of 90 deg elbows and a couple of 30 deg elbows. I would like to know the temperature at different lengths and I also would like to know the heat gain/loss of the system with and without insulation. The initial water temperature is 45 degF.
After I do all of that I'll get evaluate the energy savings using insulation vs not using insulation.
Any help is appreciated

 

[stanier]

Hi gator1991,

The problem of any software is that it can do the maths OK but you need to know the soil conditions, water table, etc to determine the coefficients. This wont come from the software. It will have to come from your geotechical engineer or soils scientist.

I use AFT's Fathom that can predict the heat transfer for a pipe system but agian you need to understand the heat transfer regime due to the soil conditions. Agin this can be complicated by the diurnal and seasonal variations of solar radiation on the soil.

Some chilled water lines for Pakistan and United Emirates are now being manufactured in pre insulated ABS pipe up to DN800. (No this is not the same ABS that they have had problems with in the USA. This product is a different resin developed for use in Australia's mining industry.)

Go to the Tyco website. They also have spreadsheet for computing the heat loss using their product. The benefits of the ABS is that you dont get external corrosion or loss of vapour barrier. Also becuase of its low modulus waterhammer is less of an issue as the celerity is reduced.

http://www.tycoflowcontrol.com.au/t...tic_pipeline_systems/plastic_products#ABSKFLO