Community cooling infrastructure from waste heat among diverse building types in Rourkela Steel Township, India

Abstract

Urban building energy modeling is an important field in the current decade due to the rising rate of urbanization, specifically in developing countries. The UN environment is promoting urban level space cooling approaches in the upcoming smart cities of India. Rourkela is a tier-2 steel township included within the ‘smart city’ mission in India and houses one of the largest Steel Plants of India, classified under Koppen Aw tropical climate zone. However it experiences extreme heat stress in the dry summer season before the onset of monsoons. The given study proposes an alternative cooling scenario utilizing waste heat from the rolling mill with which cooling in the range of 700-900 tons of nearly zero energy cooling can be made available in the surrounding areas, otherwise catered by an energy intensive cooling system reporting a COP of 2.45. This study can be further expanded to provide cooling to the nearby residential communities keeping the steel plant area as center point for community cooling infrastructure provision.