Energy Savings and Thermal Comfort Optimization in Office Cubicle Environment

摘要

In a typical office building, the energy consumption for space cooling, heating, and ventilation represents as much as 53% of the total energy use (E Source 2006), so energy savings in those systems can have a considerable impact on the building 's electricity bill. But, reducing costs may affect the thermal comfort of the occupants. In this study, effective ventilation systems are proposed to achieve two targets: 1) reduce the energy consumption and 2) maintain the thermal comfort of the occupants within an acceptable comfort level. The personal ventilation (PV) system is used in this study with the aim of satisfying both targets. With the PV system, occupants can control their thermal environments at their locations in the office with the opportunity for energy savings. Additionally, a healthy environment is ensured with the PV system due to the direct supply of clean outside air to the occupant's breathing zone. In this research several ventilation scenarios were studied in the office cubicle configuration presented in an earlier paper by Abdelmaksoud and Khalil. That study was performed using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method and presented an ideal ventilation scenario in the office cubicle that provides an ideal thermal comfort (predicted mean vote [PMV] index ≈ 0)for the occupant. The purpose of the present study is to estimate the amount of cooling-energy reduction (compared to A bdelmaksoud and Khalil's [2013] ideal ventilation case) that can be achieved while maintaining an acceptable thermal comfort level to the occupant. The occupant's thermal comfort in each studied ventilation scenario was evaluated using the comfort indices-PMV index and predicted percent dissatisfied (PPD) index-developed by Fanger (1970, 1982). Further discussions about these studied ventilation scenarios are presented in this paper.