The University Center for Energy Efficient Buildings of CTU has secured patent protection for the Hydronics 4.0 heating system, which should reduce investment costs and heat energy consumption in administrative buildings, both domestically and throughout the territory of the European Union and the USA.?
Our Hydronics 4.0 laboratory developed, under the leadership of Jiří Dostál, a pump single-pipe heating system suitable for office buildings and heat exchangers for air conditioning or convectors. In a one-pipe arrangement, one fitting with a micropump is associated with each heating element, which directs the flow of hot or cold water exactly according to the current need in the given room. Similar systems are used, for example, in North America, while in the Czech Republic, despite their economy, they are still hardly used.
Our particular scientific contribution is the use of statistical estimation methods to obtain the value of flow through the micropump. Thanks to this, a flow meter is not needed to determine the heat flow values of the exchanger or its remote thermal diagnostics. The value of the heat flow is then used to diagnose the heat exchanger, measure heat consumption and, last but not least, also to create a mathematical model of the building's behavior. With this model, optimal predictive control can be used and thus save up to 20% of the energy spent on heating while maintaining the same thermal comfort in the rooms.
We have so far obtained patent protection for this technology in the Czech Republic and throughout the territory of the European Union and the United States of America. Our application in Canada is currently being processed.
The functioning of our system is explained simply and clearly by krátké animované video.