LoginThis paper investigates ventilation characteristics and room airflow distributions in a workstation area of an office building with a personal environmental system. A personal environmental system is generally believed to be able to provide better thermal environment with less heating and cooling energy consumption. An underfloor air conditioning system with and without a desk-mounted PEM (Personal Environmental Module) is compared. A tracer gas experiment using a SF6 gas is performed to measure local supply index and room mean ventilation effectiveness. The particle image velocimetry is utilised to obtain quantitative velocity vectors in the workstation area for various supply air conditions. As a result, the local supply index in the workstation area is found to be increased by operating a PEM, compared to the case of operating FTU's (Floor Terminal Units) only, while overall room ventilation effectiveness remains the same. Flow visualisation results indicate that the horizontal warm supply air from PEM moves upward over the breathing zone in the workstation area because of the buoyancy force for a heating condition. The local supply index at the breathing zone can be improved by adjusting the angle of the PEM diffuser grille.
Room airflow distributions and ventilation characteristics by a personal air conditioning system.
Year:
2001
Bibliographic info:
Hong Kong, City University, Division of Building Science and Technology, 2001, proceedings of IAQVEC 2001, "Indoor Air Quality, Ventilation and Energy Conservation in Buildings: Fourth International Conference", held Changsha, Hunan, China, 2-5 October, 2