A study on the energy penalty of various air-side system faults in buildings

Automatic fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) can help enhance building energy efficiency by facilitating early detection of occurrence of system faults, especially those of air-conditioning systems, thus enabling rectification of the faults before much energy is wasted due to such faults. However, building owners may not invest in FDD unless they are convinced of the energy cost savings that can be achieved. This paper presents the results of a study on the energy cost impacts of a range of common system faults in variable air volume (VAV) air-conditioning systems, which are widely adopted for their good part-load energy efficiency. The faults studied include room air temperature sensor offset, stuck VAV box damper, supply air temperature sensor offset, stuck outdoor air damper and stuck/leaking cooling coil valve. The simulation results indicate that some faults may significantly increase energy use in buildings, for example, negative room air temperature sensor offset, stuck open VAV box damper, negative supply air temperature sensor offset, stuck open outdoor air damper and stuck open and leaking cooling coil valve. Since building occupants may adapt to the symptoms of these faults, such as reduced room air temperature, and thus may not complain about them, the occurrence of such faults are not immediately apparent unless a FDD system is available. Some other faults, e.g. positive supply air temperature sensor offset, positive room air temperature sensor offset, stuck closed cooling coil valve and stuck closed VAV box damper, may allow less energy to be used but will lead to unbearable indoor environmental conditions, such as high indoor temperature. Such faults, therefore, can easily be detected even without a FDD system, as there will be feedback from the building occupants.     

The effect of heat-pipe air-handling coil on energy consumption in central air-conditioning system

A study was carried out to investigate the effect of heat-pipe air-handling coil on energy consumption in a central air-conditioning system with return air. Taking an office building as an example, the study shows that compared with conventional central air-conditioning system with return air, the heat-pipe air-conditioning system can save cooling and reheating energy. In the usual range of 22–26 °C indoor design temperature and 50% relative humidity, the RES (rate of energy saving) in this office building investigated is 23.5–25.7% for cooling load and 38.1–40.9% for total energy consumption. The RES of the heat-pipe air-conditioning system increases with the increase of indoor design temperature and the decrease of indoor relative humidity. The influence of indoor relative humidity on RES is much greater than the influence of the indoor design temperature. The study indicates that a central air-conditioning system can significantly reduce its energy consumption and improve both the indoor thermal comfort and air quality when a heat-pipe air-handling coil is employed in the air-conditioning process.     

Heating system performance estimation using optimization tool and BEMS data

Causes and effects of a few real faults in a hydronic heating system are explained in this paper. Since building energy management system (BEMS) has to be utilized in fault detection and diagnosis (FDD), practical explanations of faults and their related effects are important to building caretakers. A simple heat balance model is used in this study. The model is calibrated using the optimization tool. Site data from the BEMS of a real building are calibrated against the model. Desired and real data are compared, so that the effects of the following faults are analyzed: faults in an outdoor air temperature sensor, fault in the time schedule, and a water flow imbalance problem. This paper presents an overview of the real causes of the faults and their effects both on the energy consumption and on the indoor air temperature. In addition, simple instructions for the building caretakers for fault detection in the hydronic heating systems are given.     

Online fault detection and diagnosis in VAV air handling unit by RARX modeling

Assimilation of cost-effective fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) technique in building management system can save enormous amount of energy and material. In this paper, recursive autoregressive exogenous algorithm is used to develop dynamic FDD model for variable air volume (VAV) air handling units. A methodology, based upon frequency response of the model is evolved for automatic fault detection and diagnosis. Results are validated with data obtained from a real building after introducing artificial faults. Robustness of the method is further established against sensor errors arising out of faulty bias during long term use or lack of proper commissioning. It is concluded that the method is quite robust and can detect and diagnose several types of faults. A short and simple method is also included in this paper to detect the faults of VAV units operating in the same zone by comparing their behavior. The new method, which requires very small amount of computation time, was tested with the aforementioned database and shows satisfactory results.     

室内空气设计参数与空调系统节能条件浅析

本文针对暖通空调系统设计过程中室内空气参数标准的合理取值对空调能耗的影响,探讨了空调负荷、空调能耗和空调系统节能的基本概念,对室内空气温度和相对湿度标准对空调系统能耗的影响进行了计算分析,结果表明科学认识室内空气参数标准的合理取值对空调系统能耗的影响对当前建筑节能意义重大;空调系统节能条件需要具体分析,针对不同类型的建筑和不同的空调方式,其室内空气设计标准的影响不同,空调过程设计对空调系统节能具有重要影响。另外,将典型空调案例的计算结果推广到一般工程,容易导致工程设计概念上的混淆。     

Automated FDD of multiple-simultaneous faults (MSF) and the application to building chillers

Heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and refrigeration (HVAC&R) systems operated under faulty condition often result in extra energy consumption (up to 30% for commercial buildings) and cost, less comfort control and bad indoor/outdoor air quality, especially when multiple faults happening simultaneously. This study presents a novel hybrid strategy that combines support vector machine (SVM) and multi-label (ML) technique for the automated detection and diagnosis of multiple-simultaneous faults (MSF), and elaborates its application to a building chiller. One of the great advantages ML has against the mono-label (mL) technique is that no MSF data are needed for model training while a good FDD performance for MSF could be obtained. Two individual chiller faults and one of their combinations (an MSF) were investigated. Detailed studies on the use of three features sets and the training of the model with/without normal or/and MSF data were conducted and compared with the mL-SVM model. The results show that the ML-SVM model trained on the normal and two individual faults has an excellent performance, especially when the eight fault-indicative features (Feat8) were employed (correct rate over 99.9%). Feat8 behaves still excellent even when Gaussian white noise has been added to the test data.     

A fault detection and diagnosis strategy of VAV air-conditioning systems for improved energy and control performances

This paper presents the results of a site survey study on the faults in variable air volume (VAV) terminals and an automatic fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) strategy for VAV air-conditioning systems using a hybrid approach. The site survey study was conducted in a commercial building. 20.9% VAV terminals were ineffective and 10 main faults were identified in the VAV air-conditioning systems. The FDD strategy adopts a hybrid approach utilizing expert rules, performance indexes and statistical process control models to address these faults. Supported by a pattern recognition method, expert rules and performance indexes based on system physical characteristics are adopted to detect 9 of the 10 faults. Two pattern recognition indexes are introduced for fault isolation to overcome the difficulty in differentiating damper sticking and hysteresis from improper controller tuning. A principal component analysis (PCA)-based method is developed to detect VAV terminal flow sensor biases and to reconstruct the faulty sensors. The FDD strategy is tested and validated on typical VAV air-conditioning systems involving multiple faults both in simulation and in situ tests.     

室内温、湿度对人体热舒适和空调能耗影响的研究

以采用一次回风集中空调系统的办公建筑为例,就室内温、湿度设计参数对空调房间热舒适环境和空调系统能耗的影响进行了分析。研究结果表明,在同样的室内人体热舒适环境(等效温度)的条件下,随着室内温度的增加,一次回风系统的需冷量和总的耗能量是增加的。因此,夏季提高空调室内温度是不节能的。在相同热舒适(等效温度)条件下,要减少空调系统的冷负荷,室内设计温、湿度参数在推荐的热舒适区范围内,宜采用较大的室内相对湿度和较低的室内干球温度的组合,或采用较高的等效温度。     

A critical review of fault modeling of HVAC systems in buildings

Buildings consumed about 40% of primary energy and 70% of the electricity in the U.S. It is well known that most buildings lose a portion of their desired and designed energy efficiency in the years after they are commissioned or recommissioned. Majority of the Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) systems have multiple faults residing in the systems causing either energy, thermal comfort, or indoor air quality penalties. There are hundreds of fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) algorithms available, but there is lacking a common framework to assess and validate those FDD algorithms. Fault modeling is one of the key components of such a framework. In general, fault modeling has two purposes: testing and assessment of FDD algorithms, and fault impacts analysis in terms of building energy consumption and occupants’ thermal comfort. It is expected that fault ranking from the fault impact analysis can facilitate building facility managers to make decisions. This paper provides a detailed review of current state-of-the-art for the fault modeling of HVAC systems in buildings, including fault model, fault occurrence probability, and fault simulation platform. Fault simulations considering fault occurrence probability can generate realistic faulty data across a variety of faulty operating conditions, and facilitate testing and assessment of different FDD algorithms. They can also help the fault impact study. Three research gaps are identified through this critical literature review: (1) The number of available fault models of HVAC systems is still limited. A fault model library could be developed to cover all common HVAC faults for both traditional and non-traditional HVAC systems. (2) It is imperative to include the fault occurrence probability in fault simulations for a realistic fault impacts analysis such as fault ranking. (3) Fault simulation platforms need further improvements to better facilitate the fault impact analysis.     

基于EnergyPlus对南京地区应用夜间通风预测

为了对南京地区进行夜问通风的可行性进行预测,选取南京地区某典型办公楼,利用建筑全能耗模拟软件EnergyPlus进行了模拟研究。在典型气象条件下,分别考虑了通风时间,换气次数等因素对室内温湿度及空气比焓的影响。将室内空气焓值的变化等效为空气源热泵空调耗电量,通过对比空调的耗电量与通风风机的耗电量,得出最佳的换气次数,并进行了节能效果分析。结果表明：通风时间选择在室外温度较低的时间段内较为合适。换气次数在不同的通风时间下对应不同的临界点,当换气次数小于临界点的换气次数时,等效空调耗电量大于风机耗电量,此时具有节能效果。当通风时间为6：00～6：30时,换气次数为1-2ac／h时,等效空调的耗电量与风机的耗电量差值的绝对值最大,半小时通风的最大节能达到3．6kWh。     

对热舒适、空气感觉质量及能耗的模拟研究

室内空调设计温度和新风量对热舒适，室内空气质量及能耗量有重要影响，然而对它们之间相互关系进行研究的文献却较少。通过计算机模拟空调系统在7种室内设计温度和7种新风量条件下的运行情况，得到不同的设计条件组合对热舒适、人体感觉空气质量及建筑能耗量的影响。基于这项分析，提出了此办公建筑合理的室内设计温度和新风量取值。     

毛细管平面空调系统简介

传统的空调系统普遍采用温湿度耦合的控制方法,存在能源利用品位上的浪费、难以适应温湿度比的变化以及室内空气品质差等问题,针对我国日益高涨的提高室内环境舒适性和降低建筑能耗的大好形势,介绍一种高效节能的室内环境调节系统:毛细管平面空调系统,分析了其具有的优点及面临的问题和机遇.     

全热换热器应用于空调系统节能的研究进展

空调系统的大量使用导致了空调能耗所占社会总能耗的比重越来越大。因此,降低空调系统的能耗对降低建筑物耗能、节约能源有重要意义。全热交换器是一种可以降低空调负荷、节约系统能耗、提高系统效率的高效节能产品。它有效地解决了改善室内空气品质与空调节能之间的矛盾,在空调系统节能领域中是不可替代的。     

全热换热器应用于空调系统节能的研究进展

空调系统的大量使用导致了空调能耗所占社会总能耗的比重越来越大。因此，降低空调系统的能耗对降低建筑物耗能、节约能源有重要意义。全热交换器是一种可以降低空调负荷、节约系统能耗、提高系统效率的高效节能产品。它有效地解决了改善室内空气品质与空调节能之间的矛盾，在空调系统节能领域中是不可替代的。     

基于专家规则的空调系统在线故障检测与诊断

本文针对一次回风空调系统过渡季全新风经济运行模式中的易发性故障进行了研究,提出了故障检测与诊断的专家规则集,并采用HVACSim+软件分别模拟了空调系统联动风阀卡在非全新风状态、冷冻水供水温度远高于设计值、冷冻水阀卡在大或小开度处以及新风传感器偏差过大5种故障下的运行状态。模拟结果验证了规则集的正确性,表明基于该规则集的故障诊断方法可有效用于空调运行的实时监测和故障诊断,有助于系统运行的优化。     

The impact of air filter pressure drop on the performance of typical air-conditioning systems

Filters are used in heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems for both commercial and residential buildings to protect the equipment and improve indoor air quality in conditioned spaces. Although there are many benefits of using the air filter in an air-conditioning system, the resistance associated with it can increase fan energy use and may adversely affect air-conditioning system performance and efficiency. The paper explores the impact of air filtration on energy consumption for a typical air-conditioning (AC) system with constant- or variable-speed fan. A whole building simulation model is used to simulate the annual energy consumption for various air-conditioning system capacities, different levels of filter cleanliness, and various filter minimum efficiency reporting values (MERV). The results indicate that with a constant-speed fan, the cooling energy use increases as the filter gets dirty over time and the energy use in the fan may increase but this depends heavily on the investigated fan performance curve. With a variable-speed fan, the fan energy use increases with a dirty filter but the cooling and heating energy uses are slightly affected. The fan energy use rise due to the dirty filter depends mainly on air system capacities, filter MERV ratings, and the degree of the filter cleanliness.     

Performance of temperature and humidity independent control air-conditioning system in an office building

The temperature and humidity independent control (THIC) system, which controls indoor temperature and moisture separately, may be an attractive alternative to existing conventional HVAC systems for its prominent improvement on the overall system performance and utilization of low grade energy resources. In order to verify the effectiveness of THIC system, a pilot project has been implemented in an office building in Shenzhen, China. In the system, liquid desiccant fresh air handling units driven by heat pumps are utilized to remove the entire latent load of outdoor air supplied for the whole building, and chilled water at the temperature of 17.5 °C from chiller is pumped and distributed into dry fan coil units and radiant panels to control indoor temperature. This paper presents the results of field test of the system, which shows that the system can provide a comfortable indoor environment even in very hot and humid weather. The COP of the entire THIC system can reach 4.0. According to the energy usage data recorded from the year 2009, the energy consumption of the THIC system in the tested office building was 32.2 kWh/(m² yr), which demonstrates magnificent energy-saving potential compared with the conventional air-conditioning system (around 49 kWh/(m² yr)).     

新型排风能量回收装置的分析与研究

作者从全铝制板翅式换热器与凝结水间接蒸发冷却联合应用的试验获得的结果出发，对该换热器应用于集中空调系统的能量回收做出了计算，并且进行较为详尽的分析，计算结果表明全新风空调系统使用该能量回收装置后，可以节省机组装机容量50％，节省运行费用一半；这对需要大量新风的厂房，医院的特殊病区等有很好的节能效果；而普通的舒适性空调系统，应用该能量回收装置后也可以节省装机容量20％；这表明在集中空调系统中应用全铝制板翅式换热器既能改善室内空气品质又能回收排风能量，是集中空调系统节能和人性化行之有效的措施：     

A new method of determination of indoor temperature and relative humidity with consideration of human thermal comfort

A new method is described in this article for selecting indoor temperature and indoor relative humidity to achieve minimum energy consumption for a required indoor thermal comfort level which is evaluated with indoor effective temperature. This method is derived from a central air-conditioning system and is based on our investigation that under a same indoor effective temperature, the system cooling load and the system energy consumption increase with an increase of indoor temperature. As such, energy consumption cannot be reduced with increasing indoor temperature for a given human thermal comfort level. In order to reduce energy consumption while keeping a same indoor thermal comfort level, indoor temperature and relative humidity may be determined with the proposed method described in this article. With the proposed method, a parameter variation study has also been conducted, which suggests that for a given indoor effective temperature, a combination of high indoor relative humidity and low indoor temperature be generally taken. The proposed method is based on the central air-conditioning system; yet it can be easily extended to other systems.     

Effects of outdoor air conditions on hybrid air conditioning based on task/ambient strategy with natural and mechanical ventilation in office buildings

This research aims to clarify the effects and indoor environmental characteristics of natural and mechanical hybrid air-conditioning systems in office buildings during intermediate seasons and to obtain design data. Natural and mechanical hybrid air conditioning is an air-conditioning system that utilizes natural ventilation and mechanical air-conditioning systems to improve the quality of the indoor thermal and air environment, and to reduce energy consumption. This report first categorizes the available natural ventilation conditions and estimates the amount of natural ventilation available in a model building. Furthermore, based on the concept of task-ambient air conditioning, after controlling the average temperature in the task zone to a target air conditioning temperature (26°C), changes in the outdoor temperature/humidity and the inflow rate, and the indoor environment and amount of cool heat input were studied with changes in the size of the natural vent using three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis. The results of these studies indicated that natural ventilation at temperatures lower than the indoor temperature effectively covered the lower indoor task zone through negative buoyancy, which enabled energy-saving air conditioning in the task zone.