Many district cooling systems suffer from low delta-Ts due to faults in the substations and buildings. This causes increased pumping costs, congested distribution networks and operation of more chillers. To enable fault detection and further diagnosis of district cooling substations, knowledge about the actual performance is needed. In this paper, a method using performance indicators to assess the performance of individual district cooling substations was developed along with a ranking system for substation comparison purposes. The performance assessment method was tested on 26 substations in a district cooling system by developing an algorithm. The input to the method was historical operational data collected from the substations’ primary and secondary sides from four years. The output summarized the performance of the substation in a few seconds and the ranking indicated which substation is in most need of improvement. The performance assessment can be conducted with only primary data as input but including secondary data from the building system provides additional information about the substation efficiency along with potential improvement measures. The method can be implemented by a utility company to serve as decision support and facilitate continuous follow-up of the substations to subsequently enable fault detection of district cooling substations.

High-temperature and high-pollution mobile sources are frequently encountered in industrial environments. Fixed-position exhaust outlets often fail to promptly remove heat and contaminants when these sources are in motion, leading to local accumulation and reduced indoor air quality. This study proposes a novel mobile exhaust system capable of tracking and dynamically aligning with moving emission sources to improve heat removal and cooling efficiency. Three configurations were evaluated: (1) a fixed exhaust outlet, (2) an exhaust vent moving synchronously with the heat source, and (3) a buoyancy-driven tracking exhaust outlet. Small-scale experiments and CFD simulations using dynamic mesh techniques were conducted. The results showed that the synchronous system reduced ambient temperature by an average of 0.25 to 2.3 °C compared to the fixed outlet, while the buoyancy-tracking system achieved an additional 0.15 to 2.5 °C reduction. The study also introduces a correlation between thermal plume inclination and the Archimedes number, providing a predictive basis for exhaust positioning. Given the similar dispersion patterns of heat and airborne pollutants, the proposed system holds promise for both thermal management and contaminant control in dynamic industrial environments. Furthermore, the system may offer critical advantages in emergency ventilation scenarios involving intense heat or hazardous pollutant outbreaks.