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Danfoss System Selection Tool
Description
The Danfoss System Selection Tool helps us to ...
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System Selection Tool
The System Selection Tool is an engineering application designed to help users find the most suitable refrigeration or heat pump system for a given operating point. By entering a few key parameters — such as the desired capacity, temperatures and refrigerant — the tool automatically pre-selects, simulates and evaluates hundreds of possible system configurations. The results are ranked by efficiency (COP), operating costs (OPEX) and capital investment (CAPEX), enabling the user to make a well-informed decision. A detailed report including system diagrams and part-load performance can be generated for each selected system.
The tool covers single- and multi-compressor systems as well as single- and two-stage cycle designs. It supports various refrigerants (e.g. R1234ze, R515B) and a wide range of coolant media. Behind the scenes, physical system models (FMUs) are simulated dynamically — including the complete control logic — to determine realistic performance data at the operating point and across the full part-load range. Heat exchangers are sized automatically based on the requested capacity and temperature differences.
This guide walks through every step of the workflow: from creating a project and defining the use case, through the automated selection and simulation process, to reviewing results, comparing systems and generating a customer-ready report with bill of materials, CAPEX and OPEX analysis.
Tool goals
What such a tool must be able to do:
- Suitable systems must be selected quickly.
- The user must provide as little information as possible (specifies an operating point).
- As many suitable systems as possible should be selected.
- The user decides between the systems based on efficiency and economy.
- The tool must be expandable to add further systems.
- Important key indicators of the system should be determined for the selected operating point:
- Coefficient of performance (COP)
- Capacity (heating and cooling)
- Temperatures (inlet and outlet)
- The tool shall create a report with detailed information of the system (part load, limits of the system)
- Bill of materials (BOM)
- Price of the system
Workflow:
- The user defines the system operating point.
- The selector uses the system requirements of each system for pre-selection.
- The FMU simulator starts the simulations of the pre-selected systems.
- The selector checks the results and removes systems which have not reached the operating point.
- The results of the systems that have fulfilled all the requirements of the three selection levels are shown in the result system table.
- The tool visualize the selected system table, the simulation results and component lists of each system.
Landing page
The landing page contains contact details, frequently asked questions and information about updates to the tool.
- General Information
- News & Updates
- FAQ
- Contact information
Create a new project
Once you've started, you'll see an overview of your projects and can create new ones.
Define project metadata
- Project name
- Project owner
- Country
- Application type
- E-Mail address
Manage projects and start a system selection
Manage your projects
- Search project by metadata
- Edit project information
- Copy project
Create new system selection by starting a calculation
- Start a system selection by defining the use case
- Start of simulations of matching systems
- Choosing the best system
- Creating a report
Define use case for system selection
Use case (operation point for system sizing)
- Choose the system type
- Water to water heat pump
- Etc.
- Select heating or cooling
- Define the capacity at the operating point (kW)
- Define if multiple compressor systems shall be able to switch off compressors
- Define the refrigerant and coolant media
- Define the target temperatures
- Enable temperature control
Tool connectivity
- These inputs could be an output of the heat recovery tool
Input actions
- Edit
- Fill with default values
- Delete inputs
CAPEX and OPEX
Load Profile
- Full load operation
- Monthly user defined load profile
- Default load profile for cooling and heating
OPEX
- Define electricity price to calculate the annual operating costs
CAPEX
- Define GGP (f. e. EU: 40%, CH: 30%)
- Price_System = Cost / (1 − GGP)
- Define copper price to calculate the shell and tube heat exchanger price
- Define the shell and tube price factor (f_STHX) to calculate the heat exchanger price (Price) out of the copper costs
- Cost_copper = M_copper · Price_copper
- Price = Cost_copper · f_STHX
- Start the calculations for selection
What happens after the calculation starts?
User input is used as parameter for the system models. These models will be simulated to select the best system in terms of efficiency, operating costs or capital investment. However, as there are thousands of possible variations, the system models are filtered first:
- Pre-Selection: During the pre-selection process, the system automatically filters out those who clearly do not meet the requirements.
- Model-Based-Selection: The models that have successfully passed the pre-selection stage will be simulated. The system model checks the user input through simple calculations to simulation start (stable, maximum pressure or pressure difference). If system limits are reached, the simulation is aborted and the system deselected.
- Result-Selection: The results are checked after the simulation.
What systems are available?
- Single compressor and single stage: Only one compressor in one cycle for small cooling or heating capacities.
- Multiple compressor and single stage: Multiple parallel compressors in one cycle for high capacities use cases with low temperatures differences between coolant inlet and outlet.
- Single compressor and two stages: Only one compressor per stage, but two stages for medium capacities with high temperature differences between coolant inlet and outlet.
- Multiple compressor and single stage: Multiple parallel compressors in one cycle and two stages for high capacities and high temperature differences between coolant inlet and outlet.
System components
Compressors
- Turbocor TGH 285
- Turbocor TGS 230-520
- Turbocor TTS 300-700 (planned for version 1.1)
- Turbocor TTH 375 (planned for version 1.1)
- Bock (planned for version 1.2)
Refrigerants
- R1234ze
- R515B
- R134a (planned for version 1.1)
- R513A (planned for version 1.1)
Design
- Multiple parallel compressors
- Flush tank / separator
- Shell and tube heat exchanger
System designs
Design
- Economizer
- Separator
Stages
Design
- 1 Stage
- 2 Stage
- Parallel coolant
- Serial coolant
- parallel hot coolant configuration
- serial cold coolant configuration
System variations
Variations:
- Only the combination of compressor types, temperature ranges (ST, MT, HT), the number of stages and the number of compressors results in 150 possible combinations.
- With the potential refrigerants (R1234ze, R515B), this number doubles again to 300 possible combinations.
- Furthermore, 20 different coolants are possible, which increases the number of possible combinations by a factor of 20, bringing the total to 6,000 variants.
- In addition, the stages on the cold and hot sides can be connected in series or parallel, which quadruples the number of two-stage systems. Together with the single-stage systems, that makes a total of 21,000 variations.
Many more systems and variations are possible:
- Different number of compressors of two stages.
- Different compressor types of two stages.
- Internal heat exchanger.
- Different control logics
- Etc.
Overview
Start the selection:
- Once the user has clicked on calculate, they are shown a summary of their entries.
- The user can confirm or cancel this.
Simulation
FMU Simulation
- The system models that have passed the pre-selection stage will now be simulated and evaluated.
- Currently, an average of 10–20 systems are selected and simulated.
- Each of these simulations corresponds to a dynamic simulation of the physical model, including:
- A complete control system for a realistic behavior at the operating point and in part load conditions.
- Each system first determines the maximum cooling or heating capacity.
- The results contain the part load for each 10% step of the maximum capacity.
- The number of tubes, the number of fins, the diameter of the heat exchanger shell and its length are calculated at the start of the simulation based on the required capacity and temperature differences.
The following components are scaled by the requested capacity:
- Control valves
- Plate heat exchanger
- Flush tank
All components are initialized for a standard operating point.
After the simulation, the following calculations are performed:
- OPEX:
- Part load capacities and temperatures
- Seasonal coefficient of performance (SCOP)
- Annual operating costs
- CAPEX:
- Total system price
Result selection
Selection:
- After the simulation, the results are reviewed. Any systems that have not achieved the target will be removed.
- Was the desired heating capacity reached at the given operating point?
- If the simulation result deviates by more than 10% from the requested capacity, the system is removed from the results.
- Have the inlet and outlet water temperatures been reached?
Results list
Selection:
- Project overview
- Result list:
- Actual result
- Previous results
- Most important inputs
- The user can start a "New Calculation" to edit and rerun the calculation.
Result page – system overview
Preselection and system overview:
- For heating operation, the system is preselected with the highest COP_H.
- For cooling operation, the system is preselected with the highest COP_C.
- The selected system is highlighted.
- The key performance indicators (COP, SCOP, Price, etc.) are listed in the table to help users select the most suitable system.
Part load
Part load performance:
- The minimum and maximum capacity was determined for each system.
- Part-load behavior is calculated in 10% increments between the minimum and maximum capacity.
- For each partial load, the efficiency, heating and cooling capacity, as well as the temperatures and power consumption, are calculated.
- If the temperature is not controlled, the target temperatures are only reached at the operating point.
- If the temperature is controlled, the temperatures are adjusted around the operating point until the minimum or maximum coolant mass flow rate is reached.
- If the user has specified that the number of compressors is variable, then in multi-compressor systems the number of compressors is reduced depending on the target capacity.
BOM list
Selection:
- The BOM (Bill of Materials) lists all the components of the system and their prices.
- In some systems, groups of components are grouped together; for example, the TGS-380 accessories.
- The tool calculates the geometry of shell-and-tube heat exchangers, which can then be used to calculate the required mass of copper, which in turn is used to estimate the cost.
- In future versions of the tool, we plan to break down the BOM list in detail so that users can see the quantities and prices of each individual components.
Evaporator/Condenser sizing
- The needed volume flow rate will be calculated out of the temperatures and the requested capacity.
- The total cross section area of all tubes is calculated out of the volume flow rate and the maximum velocity.
- The cross-section area of single tube will be calculated out of the inner diameter of the tube.
- The minimum number of tubes will be calculated by deviation of the total cross section area with the tube cross section area.
- Finally, the shell inner diameter will be calculated out of the minimum number of tubes, the shell and tube diameter, the fin length and the top clearance.
Evaporator/Condenser sizing (continued)
- The shell length will be calculated out of the needed heat transfer area, the number of fins, the fin heat transfer area, the number of pipes and the pipe length.
System diagram
Selection:
- A system diagram can be viewed for each system.
- The diagram is created for the operating point selected by the user and contains the following key figures and states:
- COP, capacities and power consumptions
- Refrigerant and coolant temperatures, pressures and volume flow rates
- Valve opening
- Number of compressor and speed
- Superheat temperature differences
- Subcooling temperature differences
System report
Selection:
- A report can be generated for each system.
- The report can be sent to customers.
- The report contains all the key information:
- General information
- System layout
- Solution proposal
- Operating point performance
- Part load performance
- System CAPEX analysis
- System OPEX analysis
System report (with appendix)
Selection:
- A report can be generated for each system.
- The report can be sent to customers.
- The report contains all the key information:
- General information
- System layout
- Solution proposal
- Operating point performance
- Part load performance
- System CAPEX analysis
- System OPEX analysis
- Appendix
System report - general information
General information:
- Project location
- Use case:
- Heating or cooling
- Target capacities
- System type
- Coolant inlet and outlet temperature
System report - system layout
Selection:
- General system layout description
- The diagram is created for the operating point selected by the user and contains the following key figures and states:
- COP, capacities and power consumptions
- Refrigerant and coolant temperatures, pressures and volume flow rates
- Valve opening
- Number of compressor and speed
- Superheat temperature differences
- Subcooling temperature differences
System report - operating point performance
Operating point performance:
- Heating and cooling capacities
- Power consumption
- COP heating
- COP cooling
- COP heating and cooling
- Evaporator coolant
- Inlet temperature
- Outlet temperature
- Volume flow rate
- Condenser coolant
- Inlet temperature
- Outlet temperature
- Volume flow rate
System report - operating point performance (per stage)
Operating point performance per stage:
- The same information, but only for one stage of the overall system.
- The stage description includes the following additional information:
- Number of compressors of the stage
- Compressor type of the stage
System report - part load performance
Part load performance:
- The report contains the same information as the results table.
System report - system CAPEX analysis
CAPEX:
- The report includes the price, the number and quantity of stages and the total price.
System report - system OPEX analysis
OPEX:
- The OPEX analysis includes all operating costs and key performance indicators:
- Total heating capacity for the year
- Total cooling capacity for the year
- Total power consumption for the year
- Seasonal coefficient of performance (heating)
- Seasonal coefficient of performance (cooling)
- Cost per kWh heating [€/kWh]
- Cost per kWh cooling [€/kWh]
- Annual operating costs [€]
System report - Appendix
Product information on the components used and comparable products within the product range:
- Product information
- Product groups
- Differences between the product families
- Technical description
Control
The two-stage refrigeration circuits used employ two control valves and the compressor speed to regulate the system. All systems and stages are controlled independently of one another.
Controlled components:
- Compressor speed
- Expansion valve to medium pressure level
- Expansion valve to low pressure level
Control (control types)
The system control block includes different control types:
- Initial determination of the maximum capacity at the operating point.
- Approaching various partial-load operating points to determine the partial-load behavior.
- Cooling or heating capacity control, with limits for:
- Minimum discharge pressure control
- Maximum suction pressure control
- Minimum and maximum compressor speed
- Automatically switching off compressors that are not needed when they are not required for the selected capacity demand.
- Separator filling level or superheat control at economizer inlet
- Evaporator filling level control
- Evaporator coolant outlet temperature control
- Condenser coolant outlet temperature control
