energy use

Elderly people residing in nursing homes spend a vast majority of their times indoors and often in common recreation areas, to allow for socialization and interaction. Elderly people are a vulnerable age group. Hence, it is essential to provide them with good breathable air quality during these common activities and reduce cross contamination through ventilation. Prolonged exposures of elderly to contaminants may adversely affect their health, quality of life and increase medical expenditures due to frequent hospitalizations.

Urban settings and climate change both impact energy use, thermal comfort and ventilation of buildings. This is more noticeable in hot urban areas where the urban heat island effect is more pronounced; also, in densely built urban areas where thermal comfort in naturally ventilated buildings is affected by changes in natural ventilation rates because of surrounding obstructions. In some cases, overshadowing might alleviate the impact.

Gas-phase air cleaners can be used to either reduce occupant dissatisfaction for the same outdoor air flow rate or to reduce the outdoor air flow rate for the same resulting occupant satisfaction based on its clean air delivery rate (CADR). The latter lowers the required ventilation rate for the same indoor air quality and can thus lead to a reduction in energy use for preheating/cooling and from transporting the outside air. However, there is no current method or metric for determining the energy benefit of installing a portable air cleaner.

Assessment methods to assess smart ventilation, in most countries focus only on comfort as criteria for the indoor air quality (IAQ), (Guyot et al., 2019). This is an issue as in doing so, pollutants that are known to cause harm to the human health are not taken into consideration while the exposure to VOCs will be elevated if the smart ventilation system lowers the ventilation flowrates to save energy (De Jonge and Laverge, 2021).

Worldwide the food system is responsible for 33% of greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated that by 2050, the total food production should be 70% more than current food production levels. In the UK, food chain is responsible for around 18% of final energy use and 20% of GHG emissions. Estimates indicate that energy savings of the order of 50% are achievable in food chains by appropriate technology changes in food production, processing, packaging, transportation, and consumption.

Buildings account for approximately 40 % of energy use in the European Union, as well as in the United States. In light of the European Energy performance of buildings directive, efforts are underway to reduce this energy use by targeting zero or nearly zero energy buildings. In such low energy buildings in cold climates, ventilation to ensure suitable indoor air quality is responsible for half or more of their energy use. The use of heat recovery and demand-controlled ventilation are potential solutions to reduce ventilation-related energy consumption.

The proposed Annex should bring researchers and industry together to investigate the possible energy benefits by using gas phase air cleaners (partial substitute for ventilation) and establish procedures for improving indoor air quality or reduced amount of ventilation by gas phase air cleaning. The project shall also establish a test method for air cleaners that considers the influence on the perceived air quality and substances in the indoor air.

The early design stage of a building is decisive for describing the concept of the HVAC system. Designers and practitioners can adjust and optimize the design during this stage as it provides them with enough resilience to adapt new changes. In practice, a well-defined optimization process is essentially required in order to achieve the project’s goals within a reasonable time span. These goals vary from one project to another, and sometimes they require a comprehensive study to identify the factual and stochastic parameters and their impact on the design.

Night ventilation is used extensively as a low energy strategy to cool buildings in climates where night temperatures are suitable. It can be used for spaces utilising natural or mechanical ventilation systems as well as active refrigerant cooling. Most published work focuses on domestic and relatively simple in operation commercial buildings such as offices. This paper presents a study of the cooling benefits of night ventilation for frozen food supermarkets with high cooling demand.