Investigation in performance of a hybrid personalized ventilation (PV) with under-floor air distribution (UFAD) system

In this article, combining the under—floor air distribution (UFAD) with personalized ventilation (PV) system, we tried to improve the performance of a UFAD system. Thesimulation of PV-UFAD system is investigated in a small office room with two office workers, in Airpak-Fluent software. Two Vertical desk grills (VDG) are consideredon the desks of the office workers as the PV system. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is employed for assessment of the local thermal discomfort, indoor air quality (IAQ), Fanger’s thermal comfort index (PMV- PPD) and energy consumption. Then, the performance of combination has been compared with standalone UFAD system. As the results show that the optimum performance is obtained by combining UFAD and PV. Improvements in IAQ, suitable value of temperature/velocity around the occupants head and improvements in thermal sensation are achieved by hybrid PV-UFAD systems. Also. by evaluation of energy saving of UFAD and PV-UFAD, 15.3% and l7.3% reduction in energy consumption is achieved compared to a traditional mixing ventilation (MV) system, respectively.

Keywords:

Under-floor air distribution (UFAD) , Personalized ventilation (PV) , Thermal comfort , Indoor air quality (IAQ). Energy saving