Shanghai international tourism and resorts zone central gas distributed energy station

This project is one of the typical cases of “combining Disney global standards with local best practice”, jointly created through close cooperation between the Chinese and American sides. As the sole “international tourism and resorts zone” project with power supplied by a third party, the Shanghai international tourism and resorts zone central gas distributed energy station is listed as a Sino-US energy cooperation demonstration project. All of this project’s finished design products have been reviewed by the specialised technical team at Disney. The design level has been fully recognised by the American side and presents a good start for Sino-US energy cooperation in the future, having very good demonstration value for reference. Howard Brown, the senior vice president of Shanghai Disney Resort and the project development executive, said, “the use of distributed energy station in the resort will significantly save development and operation cost of the resort and expect to increase the overall energy efficiency by 3 times, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions generated by the operation of the resort by 60%.” 

This project is located within plot H-11 to the west of the resort. It plans to build 10×4.4MW gas engine generating units. During this period, the construction scale is 5×4.4MW gas engine generating units, reserving conditions for extension of 5×4.4MW gas engine generating units. The occupied area within the project boundary is about 19,748m2, totalling 239.76m from east to west and 82m from south to north. The energy station is mainly divided into two areas: the production area (accounting for 15,000m2) and an area for future extension (accounting for 4,748m2).

The total investment in this project is about 431.75 million yuan, with annual production of 112 million kWh; annual cooling capacity of 399,000GJ, in which 253,000GJ comes from waste heat; annual heating capacity of 153,000GJ, in which 98,900GJ comes from waste heat; annual compressed air supply of 41.38 million Nm3, with an annual heat-to-electric ratio of 108% and an energy saving ratio of 29.9%.

Process equipment

The main equipment of this project uses five sets of GE’s JMS624GS-N.L gas engine generating units, with 4035kW generated output, generating efficiency as high as 45.4%. The waste heat recovery equipment adopts five sets of flue gas hot-water Lithium-bromide units and the refrigeration and heating quantity of single unit are 3490kW and 3478kW, respectively. Meanwhile, four centrifugal water chilling units, and three sets of gas-fired hot water boilers are adopted. In addition, chilled water storage and water thermal storage systems are used for peak load regulation.

This project follows the principle of: ordering power by heat; maximising the use of cooling and heating with waste heat; producing cool/warm water with gas engine exhaust and high temperature jacket water into flue gas hot-water lithium bromide units; and combining with the electric centrifugal chilled water units, chilled water storage for outward cooling supply or combined with gas boiler, hot water storage tank for outward heating supply, with a comprehensive energy utilisation efficiency of 83%. Under the prerequisite of ensuring stable and reliable heating and cooling supply, the power needed for peak load regulation inside the energy station is supplied by the energy station itself; at the same time, under the condition of guaranteeing economic efficiency and practicality of the system, the method of extra electricity 35 kV on grid is adopted.

Innovative design

This project provides cooling, heating, electricity, warm water and compressed air to the central area of Shanghai international tourism and resort zone (Disneyland) through natural gas, clean, single consumption energy, realising co-generation of five energies with a one-time comprehensive energy utilisation rate of up to 83.41%, which is far higher than 70% (the one-time energy utilisation rate of conventional distributed energy supply system), and has already reached the advanced level in the world. Through highly efficient gradient utilization of natural gas, it not only meets all the energy demands within the 3.9 square kilometres of the central area, but also builds the tourism and resort zone into a low-carbon, energy-saving, green and ecological tourism and resort zone (the energy saved is equivalent to 21,883.08t of standard coal, with an annual reduction in CO2 emissions of 75,541.87t, equivalent to 40,000t fewer trees felled). At the same time, it provides guidance for a full upgrading of large-scale tourism and resort areas in Shanghai, China and even all over the world. 

This project uses an advanced gas engine generating unit with generation efficiency as high as 45.45%. The lithium-bromide units are flue gas hot water operated and improve the thermal efficiency of the whole system by making full use of the heat from the gas engine tail flue gas and the gas engine jacket water. 

This project uses chilled (hot) water storage system, uses the difference of peak energy consumption to adjust the operating mode in an appropriate way, maximises the unit utilisation rate and enables a significant increase in its economic efficiency. 

The cold and warm medium water quality for this project adopts the strictest requirements in the world, 2-3 times higher than counterpart American standards. Its copper corrosion speed is required to be less than 0.0025mm/a, and steel corrosion less than 0.025mm/a, which is far more strict than the requirement of copper and iron corrosion speed specified in the Code for Design of Industrial Recirculating Cooling Water Treatment (0.005mm/a for copper and 0.075mm/a for iron). By adopting advanced chemical water treatment technology, this project meets the requirement of cold/warm medium water in the resort zone.

The cold and warm medium water is designed with different colours, to facilitate the operation and management of the system. 

In order to guarantee that the whole enclosed system of cold and warm medium water quality meets the requirements, we carried out sealing and airtight measures on all the water storage tanks in the system, and injected nitrogen in the air chamber above the liquid surface for protection to completely separate the water in the system from the atmosphere. At the same time, overflow pipes with water seals and suction mufflers are installed on the water tanks to prevent damage to the tank. 

The secondary pump of this project adopts high power variable frequency pump and automatic control technology. When the system causes the pressure difference at the most unfavourable point of building user deviating from design value as a result of load change, it will automatically interpret and analyse the  deviation value to obtain the order to increase or reduce water, and it will send the order to the energy station. And the frequency control of the energy station’s secondary pump will enable the inlet and outlet water pressure difference to return to the design value, thereby always ensuring maximum energy-saving can be achieved by just meeting the water quantity requirements of all the users.  

The cold and hot medium water system is a gas-free enclosed circulating water system with constant pressure featuring non-compressibility, large flow and high velocity. A check valve bypass is set up between the water inlet and outlet header of the secondary pump. When water flows through the check valve bypass, in case of a sudden outage, the kinetic energy is consumed by overcoming resistance into thermal energy, thereby avoiding damage as a result of direct impact on equipment by water hammer caused by the potential energy of the water flow. 

The safety valve needs to be set up to discharge extra swelling water that may cause system overpressure in case of temperature rise in the cold and hot medium water system. In order to meet the requirement of the round-the-clock, non-stop operation of the system, when installing the safety valve as per standard requirements, the replaceable safety valves with isolation valves are parallelled to enhance the safety and reliability of the system. 

This project adopts a noise treatment plan and noise countermeasures, for instance: a multi-layer composite acoustic insulation module is used on the roof and walls in the main plant area; sound-proof fire doors are used for the main plant area; windows on the external wall of the main plant area are soundproof; mufflers are installed on the vent of the external walls and roof of the main plant area; sealing and soundproof treatment is carried out on the wall pipe in the external walls of the main plant; a large air inlet silencer is installed at the air inlet of the cooling tower; sound barriers are installed to the east, north and south sides of the main plant roof; silencers are set up for the exhaust fans on the main plant roof. Within an extremely constrained area, noise and firefighting requirements in relevant codes are met. The noise treatment meets the emission limit of Class 2 functional zone as specified in Emission Standard for Industrial Enterprises Noise at Boundary. Noise in the daytime is controlled to be below 60dB and 50dB at night 1m outside the boundary. 

The boiler is equipped with an economiser, which improves the efficiency by to 95%, with low nitrogen combustion technology adopted. The gas engine has considered reserving the location for denitration equipment to meet environmental protection requirements.

The energy station uses clean natural gas as fuel and can realise power supply, cooling, heating, hot water for life and compressed air at the same time, which almost covers all kinds of energy demand in Shanghai international tourism and resort zone, truly worthy of the name of a low-carbon, energy-saving, green and ecological resort.