Study of an innovative partition-type personal modulation air-conditioning system

This paper proposes a new personal air-conditioning system, which modifies a common partition used in offices to a partition-type fan-coil unit (PFCU) with inlets and outlets on its surfaces. Chilled water is supplied as the cooling energy, and is delivered to the partitions by pipelines incorporated into the structure. Hence, conventional air conditioning systems using ceiling-based air diffusers for open-plan offices may be dispatched into several small individual systems controlled by the occupants. Another advantage of the new system is that a raised floor system is not required, so the applicability to retrofit buildings is very convenient. In this study, the transient variations of room temperature distribution and the skin temperature of a thermal manikin were measured in a real-scale climatic chamber. The preliminary test results of a prototype system have shown that the PFCU system has many promising features and deserves further development.