Investigating the energy performance of an air treatment incorporated cooling system for hot and humid climate

- An air treatment system has been introduced for enhanced indoor air quality.
- A lower outdoor air flow rate is employed due to the air-purification process.
- A mathematical model for the cooling coil unit has been developed.
- Experimental systems have been constructed to study the real-time performance.
- The system could achieve marked energy savings in hot and humid climate.

An air treatment system incorporating an air-purification unit has been proposed to reduce the energy consumption of air-conditioning system and improve indoor air quality. This system employs a lower outdoor-air fraction to realize the acceptable indoor air quality and thermal comfort resulting in marked energy savings due to the reduced cooling load for the outdoor air. The performance of the primary equipment of the air treatment system has been individually investigated. Experimental systems have been constructed to study the air-purification process and to evaluate the chiller's performance. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed air-purification unit is able to remove indoor air pollutants such as volatile organic compound. A computational model has concurrently been developed to determine the performance of the air handling cooling coil which is impacted by the outdoor-air fraction and the chilled water temperature. A higher chilled water supply temperature is adopted by reducing the outdoor-air fraction without compromising the supply air cooling capacity. Having a reduced outdoor air cooling load and a better chiller's energy efficiency operating with higher chilled water temperatures, the achievable energy savings of the air-conditioning system has been demonstrated to be up to 36% under a tropical hot and humid climate.