A networked heat meter system for measuring domestic heat supply

Heat meter is playing an increasing important role in district heating system as a basic heat measurement device. The objective of this paper is to design a novel networked heat meter with high stability and measurement accuracy for domestic water heating system and an experimental computer management system of the heat meter for remote data acquisition and management automation. Firstly, the theory of the heat measurement is analyzed in this paper, and then the hardware and software components of the networked heat meter system are designed. To perform heat measurement, the hardware of the heat meter consists of three components, namely a flow sensor, a pair of temperature sensors, and a calculator. A serial network interface is integrated to communicate with a host computer via network. A new type of digital temperature sensors is used to increase system stability and measurement accuracy as well as to simplify system design. A PC-based management system is designed to realize the management automation of the heat meters under some experimental environment. The management system concerns with the remote data acquisition of all heat meters connected to the network, the storage of the collected data, the management of the heating fee, and other management functions such as data query and report generating. At last, a simulated system calibration experiment with a standard heat meter as the reference and an actual run experiment, which the networked heat meter system and the management system were applied in the heating circuit, are performed to evaluate the precision and stability of the proposed systems. The result shows that the networked heat meter system has good measurement accuracy, high stability and the required reliability, and the management system is feasible. Based on the analysis of experiment data, some suggestions are presented for further research to improve heat measurement accuracy