Centralized heat exchangers
Introduction
Centralized heating is an air conditioning installation that serves several premises, whether or not they are in a home. When the premises or rooms have a single consumption unit (a home, for example), it is called individual heating; If they belong to several consumer units (homes or offices) it is called collective heating.
When the central heating system serves several buildings, whether residential or other uses, such as a neighborhood or a town, it is called urban, neighborhood or district heating.
The main advantages are greater efficiency and that neighbors do not have to worry about the maintenance of the generators. Also, in many cases, large consumers have better prices for the energy used, which produces economic savings that can be important (for example, in Spain, natural gas has a price per unit of energy that is 20...30% lower for building central heating than for individual ones). In current systems the efficiency is greater than in individual systems:.
Although in some old systems there was no automatic regulation and some neighbors could be hot, while others were cold, now there are much more perfect regulation systems and, in addition, it is mandatory that there be individual accounting for consumption, which favors a better distribution of heat in the different consumption units.
The most common centralized heating system is the hot water system that uses a boiler where the water is heated and emitters of the radiator or underfloor type in the inhabited premises, carrying the hot water through a network of pipes. It can also be hot air heating. The general distribution, in the case of urban or neighborhood heating, can be by steam.[1].
Taking advantage of the heat plant, the production of domestic hot water is jointly installed, which will also operate with much higher efficiency than the individual systems. To avoid the hot water taking a long time to arrive from the central tank to the tap where it will be used, a return circuit is used in which the heated water is recirculated so that there is always water at the appropriate temperature near the entrance of each consumer. Thus, the water only has to come from the general distributor (normally a vertical column) to each private home.
Centralized thermal installation
According to the RITE, a centralized installation is one in which heat production is unique for the entire building, its distribution being carried out from the generating station to the corresponding homes and/or premises by means of thermal fluids.