After reading my September column about using the heart as a guide for energy efficient HVAC design, a forward-thinking ES reader asked about using the respiratory system to think about air handling strategies.
Energy recovery, sensors, and smart deployment of other options can let a system clear the psychrometric hurdle of designing for high outdoor air requirement and high moisture levels.
Dedicated outdoor air systems (DOAS) have been available for over 20 years, with the primary benefit being the ability to decouple outdoor air tempering from conditioned space thermal loads that can be handled by separate, secondary systems.
There’s more room for mystery and surprise in the early phases, but retrofit projects still contain a unique advantage or two for the thoughtful engineer and owner.
Up to 80% of building engineers forget to regularly replace their facility’s UV-C lamps, leading to reduced HVAC/R system performance and losses in energy and indoor environmental quality.
A new Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study involving 196 cooling towers nationwide found that 84% contained Legionella DNA, indicating that the dangerous bacteria was present or had been at some point.
All outside air isn’t created equal, neither is the available engineering guidance, and there isn’t enough preliminary owner/consultant discussion about the pros and cons. Welcome to the air filtration design process.
Most of us in the developed world spend the majority of our time indoors, breathing clean-smelling air that is mechanically warmed or cooled and then perhaps filtered and recirculated.