Robust capacity configuration method of chilled water pump group considering uncertainty of chilled water flow rate

The transport factor of chilled water is required to be not lower than a limit in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) design. In the conventional design method, the capacity configuration of the chilled water pump group is optimized to reach the required limit according to a deterministic annual hourly chilled water flow rate design curve. Actually, the annual hourly chilled water flow rate curve is uncertain. In this paper, the maximum acceptable uncertainty region is defined. Based on the maximum acceptable uncertainty region, a robust capacity configuration method of the chilled water pump group is proposed. The area of the maximum acceptable uncertainty region is used as the robustness index of a capacity configuration. The most robust capacity configurations of the chilled water pump group can be obtained by the robustness evaluation of the alternative configurations. The robust method is validated by configuring the chilled water system of a factory building. The results show that the chilled water pump group capacity configuration by the proposed method is more robust than that by the conventional method and the current robust method.