atrium

In urban non-residential buildings air-conditioning systems are generally required to achieve acceptable air quality. To reduce the energy demand of HVAC-plants free cooling is proposed. The present study deals with free cooling by outdoor air (untreated or additionally cooled by evaporation) during the night. Therefore a sufficient building mass (about 600 to 800 kg/m²) is necessary which stores the heat produced in daytime and which is cooled down at night. In most conventional non-residential buildings, however, the building mass is at about 400 to 600 kg/m².