The pressure separator, patent nr 69316030, 0685053, 9202201-1. A device to make district heating
even more efficent.
Today there are about ten commercial pressure separator aplications
running, with sizes from about 1 to 60 MW heat transfer capacity.
When connecting local networks to larger networks, conflicts concerning the pressure levels of the different systems often occur.
The reason can be that the local networks have lower design pressure or that the conditions of operation will force the pressures to
exceed the safety limits. Conflict of this kind tends to increase with increasing size and complexity of networks.
Conventional solutions to these problems are either to increase the design pressure of the local network
or to keep the pressures of the networks apart by means of heat exchangers.
Heat exchanger, however, are inefficient and will create an unavoidable loss of temperature in the system.
The capacity of the network will decrease, favourable heat sources cannot be fully utilized etc.
These wellknown facts make the system less effective and will strongly reduce the advantage of network integration.
An alternative to heat exchangers is offered by ‘pressure separators’. In this case the different parts of the network
are hydraulically connected to each other (they use the same water) but operate at different pressure levels.
Thus, there will be no temperature losses but still the advantages with different pressures.
The pressure separator will the be responsible for the necessity to keep the pressures apart.
