An Investigation on Life Cycle Assessment of a Central Mechanical Room in Office Buildings: A Case Study

Buildings have a significant contribution towards energy consumption and carbon emission in today’s society. A considerable part of this consumption is devoted to Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems. Hence there is a huge potential for saving the energy and reducing environmental emissions in buildings by using efficient HVAC systems. The primary step in the optimization process is devoted to analyze the current status of a system. In this regard, we aim to investigate the resource consumption, and the associated environmental impact of a central mechanical room (heating section) through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The mechanical room is responsible to provide heat and domestic hot water for a number of office buildings. The input data for mechanical room are quantified for energy and water consumption in operational phase.The environmental impact can be evaluated by LCA for resource consumption. Several environmental impacts are considered in this assessment. Moreover, the impact level over all the energy and water inventories has been identified. The most impact is caused by natural gas consumption followed by electricity and water consumption. The results will be of pertinence for cleaner and greener design plan of HVAC systems, and shall assist decision makers to consider the results of this project for any optimization plan in the whole life cycle of mechanical rooms in the buildings.

An Investigation on Life Cycle Assessment of a Central Mechanical Room in Office Buildings: A Case Study Keywords:

Life Cycle Assessment , HVAC , Mechanical Room , Environmental Impact , Carbon Emission