Keeping Cool in the Desert: Using Wind Catchers for Improved Thermal Comfort and Indoor Air Quality at Half the Energy
| Autor: | Jamal Saif, Andrew J. Wright, Kasem Elfadli, Sanober Hassan Khattak |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Meteorology
thermal comfort school Cooling load lcsh:TH1-9745 law.invention cooling load Indoor air quality law Architecture ASHRAE 90.1 wind catcher energy efficiency natural ventilation air-conditioning carbon dioxide Civil and Structural Engineering business.industry Thermal comfort Natural ventilation Building and Construction Air conditioning Ventilation (architecture) Environmental science business Evaporative cooler lcsh:Building construction |
| Zdroj: | Buildings, Vol 11, Iss 100, p 100 (2021) Buildings; Volume 11; Issue 3; Pages: 100 |
| ISSN: | 2075-5309 |
| Popis: | open access article In hot arid climates, air conditioning in the summer dominates energy use in buildings. In Kuwait, energy demand in buildings is dominated by cooling, which also determines the national peak electricity demand. Schools contribute significantly to cooling demand, but also suffer from poor ventilation. This paper presents analysis of a ventilation and cooling system for school classrooms using a wind catcher for natural ventilation and evaporative cooling. A school classroom in Kuwait with single-sided ventilation was modelled using the DesignBuilder V5.4/EnergyPlus V9.1 software and calibrated using field data. The model was used to analyse the performance of a wind catcher, with and without evaporative cooling, in terms of energy use, thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Compared to the baseline of using air-conditioning only, a wind catcher with evaporative cooling was found to reduce energy use by 52% during the summer months while increasing the comfortable hours from 76% to 100% without any supplementary air conditioning. While the time below the ASHRAE CO2 limit also improved from 11% to 24% with the wind catcher, the indoor air quality was still poor. These improvements came at the cost of a 14% increase in relative humidity. As the wind catcher solution appears to have potential with further development; several avenues for further research are proposed. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|