By Peter Witten, AAU Communication and og Public Affairs
Foto: Colourbox

Global warming is accelerating, and in the largest cities in tropical and subtropical regions, it has become a vicious cycle. Cooling homes and buildings requires vast amounts of energy due to the heat, but the massive electricity consumption for cooling increases CO₂ emissions, thereby worsening climate problems.

Now, a research project titled "Sustainable Water-based Cooling in Megacities" (SWiM) aims to develop intelligent and sustainable district cooling systems that are expected to reduce energy consumption in megacities by up to one-third.

“It is extremely important that the systems we develop are autonomous and can be installed and operated without requiring top-level experts. This large-scale initiative is a starting point for something bigger, paving the way for concrete solutions that will apply theory and methods in practice over the next five years,” says Professor Rafael Wisniewski, Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University.

Rafael Wisniewski is the coordinator of the large research project, a collaboration between Aalborg University (AAU), Aarhus University (AU), and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. The Grundfos Foundation has granted DKK 60 million to fund the project.

The research will take place both in Denmark and Singapore. Theories will be tested in real buildings in Singapore.

Underground district cooling

In Denmark, we specialize in district heating, where hot water is distributed to homes via pipelines. In Singapore, work has been done on water-based district cooling solutions using cold water. Through heat exchangers, the cold water is used to cool buildings.

One example is the Marina Bay financial district in Singapore, home to the world’s largest underground cooling network, which provides cooling to large business parks and reduces CO₂ emissions by nearly 20,000 tons annually.

Although these systems have proven effective, they still face challenges, as they typically only cover limited areas.

Prepared for cyberattacks

The new research project aims to make water-based district cooling systems scalable for cities with millions of inhabitants. The project will develop technologies that operate reliably in real-world conditions, even under circumstances such as installation errors, cyberattacks, equipment failures, or changing urban environments.

Monitoring of the cooling systems using artificial intelligence will detect faults and guide preventive maintenance, and urban planning tools will be developed to manage future cooling demand in megacities.

Digital twins

To demonstrate that the innovations can work on a large scale, the project will establish test environments in Singapore at room, floor, and building levels. This will be supplemented with digital twins - virtual representations of spaces - to simulate usage on an even larger scale.

Close collaboration with industry partners, including Grundfos, will ensure that the developed innovations are scalable and easy to implement.