Energy Consumption in Central Air-conditioning System Using Heat-pipe in Air-handling Process

摘要

Energy consumption is investigated for a central air-conditioning system with heat-pipe used in air-handling process for pre-cooling and reheating the conditioned air.The study indicates that the air-conditioning system with heat-pipe can significantly decrease both the cooling load and the total energy consumption of air-conditioning buildings compared with conventional air handling approach.In the indoor temperature range of 22°C-26°C,the rate of energy saving (RES) of the heat-pipe air-conditioning system investigated is in the range of 6.3%-25.8% for cooling load and 10.2%-41.0% for total energy consumption of an office building in Guangzhou.It is also found that the sensible heat recovered by heat-pipe is related to the outdoor design wet-bulb temperature and to the temperature difference between the outdoor dry-bulb temperature (DBT) and the outdoor wet-bulb temperature (WBT).The lower the outdoor design WBT and the larger the temperature difference between the outdoor design DBT and WBT are,the more sensible heat can be recovered by heat-pipe.