Clear Skies Ahead: 4 Ways Digital Twins are Paving the Way for Net-Zero Airport HVAC

Airports, bustling hubs of global connectivity, face unique challenges in achieving sustainability goals. Energy consumption, particularly from heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, is a significant contributor to their environmental footprint. However, a revolutionary technology is emerging to help airports optimise their HVAC performance and pave the way towards a net-zero future: HVAC Digital Twins.

A Digital Twin is a virtual replica of a physical asset or system. In the context of airport HVAC, it involves creating a sophisticated software model that mirrors the real-world behavior of the entire system, from plant and controls systems to pumps, valves and air handling units.

Critically, this virtual representation allows engineers and operators to:

1. Identify and eliminate hidden “performance gaps” to maximise the efficiency of existing HVAC systems
2. Transition to low carbon heating and cooling as cost and carbon effectively as possible
3. Successfully operate new buildings in line with their predicted energy performance

In this article, we discuss 4 ways HVAC Digital Twins help airport operators achieve these goals.

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1. Gain Control and Optimise Performance

Many airport operators lack a comprehensive understanding of their existing HVAC systems’ true performance potential. Over time, systems undergo expansions and modifications, leading to complexities and potential inefficiencies. This lack of visibility hinders efforts to optimise energy consumption and achieve sustainability goals.

HVAC Digital Twins provide a powerful solution to tackle this problem by creating a virtual replica of the entire heating and cooling installation. This digital representation offers unprecedented insights into:

• System-wide Performance: Detailed dynamic simulations within the virtual model allow for a comprehensive understanding of how the system operates under continually variable conditions, revealing hidden inefficiencies and bottlenecks.

• Identifying Key Areas of Inefficiency: By analysing the systems hydraulic behaviour, the Digital Twin can pinpoint areas of suboptimal performance, such as underutilised equipment, excessive energy consumption, and hydraulic imbalances within the system.

• Benchmarking Against Optimal Performance: The Digital Twin can be used to benchmark the actual system performance against a theoretical optimal state. This allows operators to identify areas for improvement and set realistic targets for energy savings.

By gaining a deeper understanding of their existing systems, airport operators can make data-driven decisions to optimise performance, reduce energy consumption, and significantly lower their environmental impact.

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2. Prioritise Investments

HVAC Digital Twins provides a safe and cost-effective environment to explore various HVAC optimisation alternatives before implementing them in the real world. This allows airport operators to:

• Evaluate a Wide Range of Options: From simple interventions like optimising control sequences and addressing hydraulic imbalances to more significant investments in low-carbon technologies, the Digital Twin enables the exploration of a wide spectrum of potential solutions.

• Optimise Investment Decisions: By simulating different scenarios and analysing the potential impact of each intervention, operators can create strategies that achieve the optimal balance between energy savings, decarbonisation, and investment costs.

• Avoid Costly Mistakes: Many building operators attempt to implement lowcarbon HVAC solutions without first optimising the existing system’s hydraulic performance. This often leads to inflated investment costs and reduced performance. The Digital Twin allows operators to identify and address these potential issues proactively, ensuring that the transition to low-carbon technologies is both cost-effective and successful.

By leveraging the Digital Twin to prioritise investments, airport operators can make informed decisions that maximise the return on their investments, minimise risks, and accelerate their progress towards sustainability goals.

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3. Future-Proof your Systems

The value of a Digital Twin extends beyond initial optimisation and investment decisions. By integrating HVAC system performance into ongoing asset lifecycle plans and facility management systems, airports can ensure long-term efficiency and avoid the pitfalls of “longitudinal performance drift.”

Longitudinal Performance Drift occurs when the actual performance of a system gradually deviates from its original design intent due to factors such as aging equipment, changes in operational patterns, and the accumulation of minor inefficiencies.

A Digital Twin mitigates this risk by:

• Predicting the Impact of Future Changes: Simulate proposed changes, such as building reconfigurations or equipment upgrades, to assess their impact on system performance and energy consumption before implementation.

• Optimising Component Replacement Selections: Integrate with facility management systems to provide optimised selections for planned and responsive maintenance, ensuring that replacement parts are compatible and do not negatively impact overall system performance.

• Evaluating the Impact of New Technologies: Test and evaluate the performance of innovative, energy-efficient HVAC components within the Digital Twin before implementation. This allows for a realistic assessment of their potential energysaving benefits, mitigating the risk of over optimistic supplier claims.

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4. Improve Collaboration with your FM Supply Chain

HVAC Digital Twins are an effective way to enhance collaboration between all actors in the design, installation, commissioning, and operation of HVAC systems. Often, significant energy performance gaps emerge between the original design intent and real-life performance. This can be attributed to several factors:

1. Outdated Engineering Software: The increasing complexity of modern HVAC systems often outpaces the capabilities of traditional engineering software, hindering accurate modeling and analysis.
2. Communication Challenges: Difficulties arise in effectively communicating the consequences of engineering and technical design choices between multidisciplinary teams and clients.
3. Unforeseen Impacts of Changes: The energy-related impacts of post-design changes, for example due to as budget constraints or site constraints, are often difficult to understand and quantify.
4. Inadequate Handover Information: Insufficient operational information provided at handover can impede effective operation and maintenance of the system.

Digital Twins address these challenges by:

• Facilitating Data Sharing: Building owners can share existing system models with their supply chain (M&E engineers and contractors), enabling new designs to be built upon a solid foundation and minimising the risk of assumptions.

• Assessing the Impact of Changes: The Digital Twin allows for the easy assessment of the impact of design changes on energy performance, enabling informed decision-making throughout the project lifecycle.

• Enhancing Commissioning: Model-based commissioning can be performed, ensuring that the installed system performs as expected first time right and minimising the need for costly rework.
• Improving Handover: A detailed digital as-built model can be provided to the operator, facilitating optimal operation and maintenance by providing a comprehensive understanding of the system.

By fostering collaboration and improving communication among all stakeholders, Digital Twins contribute to more efficient and effective HVAC systems that deliver on their intended performance and sustainability goals.

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Succes Story: Schiphol Airport

Schiphol Airport is one of the most important airports in Europe. With the change to more sustainable energy generation through underground thermal energy storage, as well as heat pumps, they discovered the need to optimise their entire system.

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“We wanted good insight into the functioning of the installation. There were times when the flows were not getting where we thought they should and complaints arose. We saw an imbalance in power generation and distribution and sharing, and we really wanted to get our finger on that,” says Andrew van Weers of Schiphol Airport.

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Hysopt’s Digital Twin simulations make it possible for Schiphol to understand the performance of its HVAC system. Schiphol applied this approach for Terminal 3, so making the right choices for optimisation has never been easier.

Using Hysopt’s Digital Twin, they gained insight into their cooling system and discovered various bottlenecks that would cause long term comfort and energy problems.

The result? An 88% pump energy savings in the installation while maintaining comfort. On an annual basis, this means a cost reduction of approximately 82,000€, and an additional CO₂ savings of 375 tons per year!

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Conclusion

Digital Twins empower airports to optimise HVAC systems, reduce energy consumption, and achieve sustainability goals. By creating a virtual replica of the real-world system, airports can gain valuable insights, identify inefficiencies, and make data-driven decisions.

Moreover, Digital Twins enhance collaboration among stakeholders, improving communication and ensuring that the system meets its performance objectives.

To unlock these benefits, airports should invest in developing and implementing Digital Twins technologies as part of their sustainability, net zero and HVAC development strategies.