District Heating and Cooling Systems

Dear Colleagues,

The new challenges as a result of efficiency increases, pollutant emissions, and fossil fuel reductions have led to increased attention to district heating and cooling networks (DHCNs). As it is well known, DHCNs are largely diffused, as elimination of the combustion systems at the final user stage of thermal energy allows for drastically reducing both pollutant and thermal emissions within the area of a city. Furthermore, DHCNs enable increasing safety conditions and eliminating the transportation of fuel to residential areas. Often, in order to promote efficient thermal energy production, DHCNs are supplied with heat produced by means of combined heat and power (CHP) units and/or renewable generators, as well as being integrated into storage devices. The increasing complexity of these energy networks makes the correct management of production system operations of fundamental importance. The determination of ideal system setups, as well as the control and operation of integrated networks, is not easy.

Furthermore, new generation of DHCNs have introduced the concept of smart thermal grids, which consist of a b-directional heat exchange between the network and final users. These networks operate, especially in Northern Europe, and often install micro-CHP and/or thermal solar panels, which are then distributed to the final users. This new approach to DHCNs promotes the concept of distributed generation transforming a thermal network into a smart grid.

This Special Issue of Applied Sciences aims to cover recent advances in the development, optimization, management, analysis, and design of DHCNs.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• District heating and cooling
• Smart district heating
• Combined heat and power plants (CHP)
• Renewable generators integration
• Dynamic simulation
• Heat exchange optimization
• Software for DHCNs design and analysis
• Techno-economic analysis
• DHCNs operation, maintenance, and control