Modeling and operation strategy of pavement snow melting systems utilizing low-temperature heating fluids

A heat and mass coupled model is developed for the pavement snow melting systems that utilize low-temperature heating fluids. This model is implemented in HVACSIM (heating ventilation air conditioning SIMulation) Plus and used to simulate the performance of hydronically heated pavement. The model is validated by tested data from medium-scale snow melting experiments performed at the Harbin Institute of Technology. Validated results suggest the significant improvement in simulating the performance of hydronically heated pavement by the inclusion in the model of mass transport process. Existing literature claims that the typical hydronic snow melting process consists of three sub-stages: the idling stage, the snow melting stage, and the after melting stage; this is adopted for the analysis of snow melting performance of the model, including its given heating capacity, equivalent snowfall rate, and weather conditions. Ambient temperature and heating load play a dominant role among the decision variables at the idling and after melting stages, while heating load and equivalent snowfall rate are the two major factors of snow melting performance at the snow melting stage. Based on the two main sources of impact for each sub-stage, the performance-energy consumption-environmental relation is quantitatively determined and the operation strategy for hydronically heated pavement is proposed to balance snow melting performance, environmental criteria, and energy consumption.