THERMAL SCIENCE

International Scientific Journal

Linlan Chang

,

Indra Permana

,

Fujen Wang

,

Bowo Yuli Prasetyo

IMPROVING INDOOR AIR QUALITY AND THERMAL COMFORT USING A TOTAL HEAT EXCHANGER VENTILATION SYSTEM FOR AN OFFICE BUILDING

ABSTRACT
Indoor air quality and thermal comfort affect occupant comfort and productivity. Thermal comfort supports productivity, while indoor air quality maintains occupant health. However, occupants are the main source of CO2, which is the main index for indoor pollutants in educational buildings due to many occupants gathering in one room. This study investigates the performance of applying a total heat exchanger for diluting CO2. Besides, the thermal comfort of the occupants has been evaluated extensively as the total heat exchanger also reduces the fresh air temperature. An office area with 14 graduate students seated in a meeting was investigated. Questionnaires and field measurements were conducted simultaneously. Time-varying indoor air quality (CO2 concentration) was assessed using CFD. The numerical simulation program also contained user defined function based predicted mean vote algorithms to determine occupant thermal comfort. The results indicated that without using total heat exchanger, the CO2 concentration gradually rises until it reaches a maximum of 1400 ppm inside the room. This condition occurs because there is no air change between indoor and fresh air, mainly due to the lack of fresh air supply and reliance on split air conditioning for circulation. With total heat exchanger, the concentration could lower to below 1000 ppm. In addition, it also could make room temperature slightly lower, with the overall temperature average in this study being 24.5°C without total heat exchanger and 24.1°C when total heat exchanger is operated.
KEYWORDS
CFD, IAQ, thermal comfort, PMV, THX
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2024-01-10
PAPER REVISED: 2024-02-05
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2024-02-11
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 2024-05-18
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI240110118C
CITATION EXPORT: view in browser or download as text file
THERMAL SCIENCE YEAR 2024, VOLUME 28, ISSUE Issue 6, PAGES [4531 - 4544]
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Improving indoor air quality and thermal comfort using a total heat exchanger ventilation system for an office building

© 2024 Society of Thermal Engineers of Serbia. Published by the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International licence