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High Performing Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems to Provide Excellent Indoor Climate in Energy Efficient Manner

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A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Science and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2021) | Viewed by 20023

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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Risto Kosonen

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Guest Editor

1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aalto University, FI-00076 Espoo, Finland
2. College of Urban Construction, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 210009, China
Interests: energy efficiency of building and nearly-zero energy zone; utilization of digitalization and IoT; indoor climate
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We have global climate goals to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Energy use in buildings accounts for 40% of the total primary energy consumption. Buildings and especially technical systems of buildings are playing an important role in greenhouse gas eduction. High-performing heating, cooling and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are very important from both the energy economy and indoor climate point of view. It has proven that indoor climate has a significant influence on users’ productivity and wellbeing. Thus, energy-saving measures should never be carried out by sacrificing indoor climate conditions.

In the near future, buildings should be smart enough to be able to sense, interpret, communicate, and respond to changing conditions, which are introduced based on the requirements of occupants when it come to indoor climate, operation of technical building systems, and demands of intelligent energy systems. The possibility to adapt in response to the perception of the occupants and further empower end-users makes it possible to enhance users’ satisfaction to indoor climate. Merged together with smart energy systems, building technical systems should be able to adapt their operation to the needs of the occupant and the energy systems and to improve their energy efficiency and overall performance. Technical solutions will then be able to optimize dynamic energy prices in the part of demand response control and thus enhance the flexibility of energy systems.

This Special Issue introduces novel HVAC solutions that make it possible to enhance user comfort, the performance of systems, and integration with smart energy systems. Research and review papers of novel systems and services with the aim to enhance energy performance, indoor air quality and thermal comfort, and HVAC system performance and energy flexibility are welcomed.

Prof. Risto Kosonen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Thermal comfort and indoor air quality
Radiant and convective heating/cooling systems
Domestic hot water
Ventilation and aircondition
Air distribution
Automation and IoT
Measurement and simulation methods
Renewable energy
Energy optimization
Hybrid energy systems
Integration with smart energy systems

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 5082 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Effects of Night Ventilation on Indoor Air Quality in Educational Buildings—A Field Study

by Sami Lestinen, Simo Kilpeläinen, Risto Kosonen, Maria Valkonen, Juha Jokisalo and Pertti Pasanen

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(9), 4056; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11094056 - 29 Apr 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2595

Abstract

Night ventilation methods have been used in educational buildings to guarantee indoor air quality at the beginning of occupied periods. A typical method has been to pre-start ventilation 2 h before the space usage. Another selection has been to ventilate a building continuously during the night with a minimum airflow rate that can dilute material emissions. In this study, the pre-started, continuous, and intermittent ventilation methods were compared by assessing indoor air quality in field measurements. The daytime ventilation was operating normally. The test periods lasted for 2 weeks. Indoor air quality was assessed by measuring the total volatile organic compounds and microbial concentrations using the quantitative polymerase chain reaction method. Additionally, the thermal conditions, carbon dioxide, and pressure differences over the building envelope were measured. The results show that the night ventilation strategy had negligible effects on microbial concentrations. In most cases, the indoor air microbial concentrations were only a few percent of those found outdoors. The averaged concentration of total volatile organic compounds was at the same level with all the night ventilation methods at the beginning of the occupied periods in the mornings. The concentrations reached a minimum level after 2-h ventilation. The concentrations of total volatile organic compounds were higher during the day than at night. This reveals that space usage had the largest effect on the total volatile organic compounds. Generally, the results show that continuous night ventilation does not significantly affect the biological and chemical contaminants. Consequently, a 2-h flushing period is long enough to freshen indoor air before occupancy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Performing Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems to Provide Excellent Indoor Climate in Energy Efficient Manner)

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25 pages, 3616 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Overheating Risk and Energy Demand of Nordic Old and New Apartment Buildings during Average and Extreme Weather Conditions under a Changing Climate

by Azin Velashjerdi Farahani, Juha Jokisalo, Natalia Korhonen, Kirsti Jylhä, Kimmo Ruosteenoja and Risto Kosonen

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(9), 3972; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11093972 - 27 Apr 2021

Cited by 26 | Viewed by 4241

Abstract

The global average air temperature is increasing as a manifestation of climate change and more intense and frequent heatwaves are expected to be associated with this rise worldwide, including northern Europe. Summertime indoor conditions in residential buildings and the health of occupants are influenced by climate change, particularly if no mechanical cooling is used. The energy use of buildings contributes to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions. It is, therefore, necessary to analyze the effects of climate change on the overheating risk and energy demand of residential buildings and to assess the efficiency of various measures to alleviate the overheating. In this study, simulations of dynamic energy and indoor conditions in a new and an old apartment building are performed using two climate scenarios for southern Finland, one for average and the other for extreme weather conditions in 2050. The evaluated measures against overheating included orientations, blinds, site shading, window properties, openable windows, the split cooling unit, and the ventilation cooling and ventilation boost. In both buildings, the overheating risk is high in the current and projected future average climate and, in particular, during exceptionally hot summers. The indoor conditions are occasionally even injurious for the health of occupants. The openable windows and ventilation cooling with ventilation boost were effective in improving the indoor conditions, during both current and future average and extreme weather conditions. However, the split cooling unit installed in the living room was the only studied solution able to completely prevent overheating in all the spaces with a fairly small amount of extra energy usage. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Performing Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems to Provide Excellent Indoor Climate in Energy Efficient Manner)

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14 pages, 3957 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Performance Analysis of the Demand-Based Ventilation in a Nordic Apartment Building

by Ilia Kravchenko, Risto Kosonen and Simo Kilpeläinen

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(1), 176; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11010176 - 27 Dec 2020

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3072

Abstract

In general, new Finnish apartment buildings are equipped with mechanical balanced demand-based ventilation. The airflow rate in the kitchen hood is boosted on demand to improve pollutant extraction during cooking. However, in practice, it has been found that the system does not work as desired. The focus of the paper was to present the simulation results from a case building equipped with a ventilation system that is commonly used in Finland. In the analysis, the airflow rates are calculated for the room, apartment, and air handling unit (AHU) levels for various ventilation mode scenarios. A significant imbalance of over 10% between the supply and exhaust airflows at the room and apartment levels was observed in the boosting mode. This imbalance creates a pressure difference over the building envelope, particularly in small studio apartments. The calculated pressure difference for future buildings with high airtightness were at the warning level of 40 Pa below atmospheric level. The kitchen hood exhaust system showed a 28% lower airflow rate in certain scenarios. A new solution to guarantee the designed airflow rates was proposed and assessed. The new solution consists of replacing the apartment level flow control damper and a new balancing method for the kitchen hood exhaust branch. The proposed design was able to stay within 10% of the designed airflow rates in all operation modes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Performing Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems to Provide Excellent Indoor Climate in Energy Efficient Manner)

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23 pages, 7007 KiB

Open AccessArticle

From Electricity and Water Consumption Data to Information on Office Occupancy: A Supervised and Unsupervised Data Mining Approach

by Davor Stjelja, Juha Jokisalo and Risto Kosonen

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(24), 9089; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10249089 - 18 Dec 2020

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2328

Abstract

Climate change and technological development are pushing buildings to become more sophisticated. The installation of modern building automation systems, smart meters, and IoT devices is increasing the amount of available building operational data. The common term for this kind of building is a smart building but producing large amounts of raw data does not automatically offer intelligence that would offer new insights to the building’s operation. Smart meters are mainly used only for tracking the energy or water consumption in the building. On the other hand, building occupancy is usually not monitored in the building at all, even though it is one of the main influencing factors of consumption and indoor climate parameters. This paper is bringing the true smart building closer to practice by using machine learning methods with sub-metered electricity and water consumptions to predict the building occupancy. In the first approach, the number of occupants was predicted in an office floor using a supervised data mining method Random Forest. The model performed the best with the use of all predictors available, while from individual predictors, the sub-metered electricity used for office equipment showed the best performance. Since the supervised approach requires the continuous long-term collection of ground truth reference data (between one to three months, by this study), an unsupervised data mining method k-means clustering was tested in the second approach. With the unsupervised method, this study was able to predict the level of occupancy in a day as zero, medium, or high in a case study office floor using the equipment electricity consumption. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Performing Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems to Provide Excellent Indoor Climate in Energy Efficient Manner)

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23 pages, 5472 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Ozone Deposition on Free-Running Indoor Materials and the Corresponding Volatile Organic Compound Emissions: Implications for Ventilation Requirements

by Wei Ye, Hao Wang, Zean Chen and Xu Zhang

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(12), 4146; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10124146 - 16 Jun 2020

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2660

Abstract

Recently, tropospheric ozone has become a public health concern worldwide, along with the continuous battle against ambient fine particulate matter in countries like China. In this study, we investigate the impact of indoor ozone pollution using seven materials categorized as either wood-based panels or synthetic fibers, which were freely-stored in an office/lab environment. Most materials were considered as used and aged more than 1–2 years. An experimental apparatus was used to study ozone deposition and detect volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from the specimens when exposed to ozone at three concentration levels: <10, 100, and 300 ppb. A simplified model is proposed to discuss ventilation requirements based on a standard room. We found that the mean ozone deposition velocities from the seven materials ranged from 0.005 to 0.062 cm·s⁻¹. Both the engineering wood and some of the synthetic fibers were, moreover, prone to ozone deposition. Second, 15 VOCs were found in the sampling air from a 24-VOC target list after ozone exposure. The emission rates of the VOCs from all seven materials were then determined. Third, when the ozone concentration in the outdoor air is not severely high, it is possible to use ventilation to maintain acceptable indoor air quality. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Performing Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems to Provide Excellent Indoor Climate in Energy Efficient Manner)

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25 pages, 3846 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental and Simulation Study of Micro-Channel Backplane Heat Pipe Air Conditioning System in Data Center

by Liping Zeng, Xing Liu, Quan Zhang, Jun Yi, Xiaohua Li, Xianglong Liu and Huan Su

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(4), 1255; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10041255 - 13 Feb 2020

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2442

Abstract

This paper mainly studies the heat transfer performance of backplane micro-channel heat pipes by establishing a steady-state numerical model. Compared with the experimental data, the heat transfer characteristics under different structure parameters and operating parameters were studied, and the change of heat transfer coefficient inside the system, the air outlet temperature of the back plate and the influence of different environmental factors on the heat transfer performance of the system were analyzed. The results show that the overall error between simulation results and experimental data is less than 10%. In the range of the optimal filling rate (FR = 64.40%–73.60%), the outlet temperature at the lowest point and the highest point of the evaporation section is 22.46 °C and 19.60 °C, the temperature difference does not exceed 3 °C, and the distribution gradient in vertical height is small and the air outlet temperature is uniform. The heat transfer coefficient between the evaporator and the condenser is larger than the heat transfer coefficient under the conditions of low and high liquid charge rate. It increases gradually along the flow direction, and decreases gradually with the flow rate of the condenser. When the width of the flat tube of the evaporator increases from 20 mm to 28 mm, the internal pressure drop of the evaporator decreases by 45.83% and the heat exchange increases by 18.34%. When the number of evaporator slices increases from 16 to 24, the heat transfer increases first and then decreases, with an overall decrease of 2.86% and an increase of 87.67% in the internal pressure drop of the evaporator. The inclination angle of the corrugation changes from 30° to 60°, and the heat transfer capacity and pressure drop increase. After the inclination angle is greater than 60°, the heat transfer capacity and resistance decrease. The results are of great significance to system optimization design and engineering practical application. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Performing Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems to Provide Excellent Indoor Climate in Energy Efficient Manner)

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