Energy consumption and utilization rate analysis of automatically snow-melting system in infrastructures by thermal simulation and melting experiments

• Published in: Cold regions science and technology Vol. 138; pp. 73 - 83
• Main Authors: Liu, Kai, Huang, Silu, Wang, Fang, Xie, Hongzhou, Lu, Xueyuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.06.2017
• Subjects: Automatically snow-melting system; Electric heating pipe; Energy consumption; Energy utilization rate; Static melting; Thermal simulation; Energy consumption; Energy utilization rate; Electric heating pipe; Automatically snow-melting system; Static melting; Thermal simulation
• ISSN: 0165-232X; 1872-7441
• DOI: 10.1016/j.coldregions.2017.03.009

The automatically snow-melting system with the electric heating pipes (AS-EHP) is applied in infrastructures (concrete pavement, parking apron, garage entrances and municipal road) in cold regions to mitigate the accumulated snow problem. In order to reduce the energy consumption (EC) and improve the energy utilization rate (EUR) of AS-EHP, the analysis about EC and EUR is investigated. The melting process of AS-EHP is divided into two phases which include preheating the infrastructures and melting. The influence and sensitivity analysis between the inputs (the pipes' embedded spacing and embedded depth, heating power and wind velocity) and the outputs (EC and EUR) are found and compared in two phases by thermal simulation. The applicability and rationality of the simulation are verified by snow melting experiments. According to the simulation, decreasing embedded spacing and depth in phase 1 and phase 2 could reduce EC and improve EUR. In the two phases, the heating power is suggested to be 100W/m-140W/m under the condition that the heating pipe’ embedded spacing is 0.10m–0.25m, the depth is 0.06m–0.12m, and the wind velocity is 0m/s–15m/s. The results and suggestions could be used to efficiently guide the scheme design and operation control of AS-EHP in infrastructures. •The operation of automatically snow-melting system is divided into two phases.•The thermal simulation of snow-melting is built and verified by experiments.•The influence factors analysis is conducted in different phases of melting.•The influences of different factors on EC and EUR are analyzed and compared.•A guide for automatically snow-melting system design and operation is proposed.