District cooling entails the production and circulation of chilled water to multiple buildings through a network of insulated underground pipes. Cooled water is pumped from the central plant through the pre-insulated underground pipes linked to the building connections, which is called a Energy Transfer Station (ETS). In the ETS, the coolness of the chilled water is used to chill down the water of the building through a Plate Heat Exchanger (PHE).
The PHE is composed of hundreds of parallel, vertical, thin, metal plates very close to each other. The cold water from the cooling plant flows between two of the plates, and the water returning from the building flows between the adjacent two plates, electronically controlled pumps push the building’s cool water through the buildings pipes into fan coil units, where fans push the ambient air against cold coils, thus cooling down the air and pushing it into the room.