Enhancing Performance of Radiant Cooling System Through Decoupling of Latent Sensible Load

Abstract

Indian building stock is going to increase fivefold uptil 2030, energy demand is newlineincreasing at a very rapid rate. Improving energy efficiency in the Heating Ventilation and newlineAir-Conditioning (HVAC) systems is the foundation to improve the energy efficiency of newlinethe buildings. Radiant Cooling System (RCS) has a reputation for increasing the thermal newlinecomfort and reducing the energy consumption of buildings. Main advantages of the newlineradiant cooling system are low operational noise and reduced fan energy, which usually newlineaccounts for more than 30-40% of the total energy consumption of HVAC energy for newlinecommercial buildings. RCS can only cater to the sensible load of the space hence requires newlinea parallel system to meet the latent load. In conventional HVAC systems the total load of newlinethe building is met by single HVAC system, in RCS sensible and the latent load is newlinedecoupled. Two different HVAC systems i.e. RCS and DOAS are used to meet the newlinedecoupled (sensible and latent) load. newlineDedicated Outdoor Air Systems (DOAS) can parallely work with RCS to meet the newlinelatent load and are beneficial in meeting the ventilation requirements. However, all newlinededicated outdoor air systems configurations do not provide the same benefits in different newlineclimates. This study presents an experimental and simulation-based analysis of various newlineconfigurations of radiant cooling system and dedicated outdoor air systems among newlinediverse climate zones of India through analysis of energy saving opportunity with each newlinewith respect to conventional non-radiant all-air system. newlineThere are different strategies to decouple sensible and latent load in HVAC newlinesystems using cooling coil and sensible/energy recovery/desiccant wheels of different newlinetypes in DOAS. Six different decoupling strategies are identified and then simulated on newlinethe EnergyPlus platform using a calibrated building model having RCS for the different newlineclimatic condition. The six DOAS strategies are noted below: newlineStrategy-1: Low temperature cooling coil newlineStrategy-2: Energy recovery wheel with low temperature cooling coil newlineStr