Thermal Performance and Environmental Assessment of Evaporative Cooling Systems: Case of Mina Valley, Saudi Arabia

This paper presents a detailed description of evaporative cooling systems used for space cooling in Mina Valley, Saudi Arabia. The thermal performance and environmental impact of the evaporative coolers were evaluated. It was found that the evaporative cooling systems used for space cooling in pilgrims' accommodations and in the train stations could reduce energy consumption by as much as 75% and cut carbon dioxide emission by 78% compared to traditional vapour compression systems

Approach for Integrating Indirect Evaporative Cooling System into Contemporary Architecture

Nowadays, the knowledge of building ecology focuses on energy efficiency and how to integrate environmental and climatic parameters into HVAC and thus enhances space qualities such as comfort ability. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the rule of Indirect Evaporative Cooling systems in sustainability of contemporary architecture in hotarid and hot-humid climate. An approach for integrating a novel Sub-Wet Bulb Temperature Evaporative cooler into contemporary architecture is presented. The system uses porous clay materials, as wet media, embedded with heat pipes heat exchangers, the supply air and working air flows were staged in separate ducts and in counter flow direction. Modelling and experimental results show that supply air would be cooled to below wet bulb temperature achieving a considerable cooling capacity and effectiveness. This performance would make the system a potential alternative to conventional mechanical air conditioning systems in buildings.Qatar National Research , NPRP grant No. 4 -407 -2 -15

A CFD analysis of an electronics cooling enclosure for application in telecommunication systems

International audienceThis paper presents results of CFD analysis of an electronics cooling enclosure used as part of a larger telecommunication radar system. An original cooling enclosure was simulated using Flotherm which results were taken as the benchmark thermal performance. It was found that the operating temperature of one of the Radio Frequency (RF) components will exceed the design temperature limit of the PCB. A solution involving a re-design of thermal spreading arrangements using a 3mm thick copper shelf and a Vapour Chamber (VC) heat pipe was found to bring the operating temperatures of all RF components within the specified temperature limits. The use of a VC, in particular, reduced the 60W RF component steady state temperature by an average of 5.4°C. The study also shows that increasing the finned heat exchanger cooling air flow rate can lower further the RF components temperature though at the expense of increasing energy consumption of the fan

Residential building energy performance evaluation for different climate zones

Abstract The building sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia accounts for a large proportion of energy consumption. This paper investigates energy consumption in residential type A villa buildings constructed by the Ministry of Housing. The study specifically investigates energy consumption of a case building in three climate zones of the country identified in the KSA Building Code (SBC-602E). The software package IES-ve was used to simulate power consumption of the case building taking into account the climate characteristics of each zone. In total 6 cities were considered from the three zones to evaluate and compare annual and monthly power consumption loads of the building. It was found that there is some distinction of energy consumption for heating and cooling in the three zones (e.g., peak monthly power energy consumption for cooling varied from 6.371 MWh in Riyadh (zone1) to 1.663 MWh in Abha (zone3) and no heating requirement for Jaddah (zone 1) while Turaif (zone 3) heating consumption is 23.835 MWh) however, further work is required to identify clearer the climate specifications within each zone to address the excess energy consumption of this type of buildings.</jats:p

Equipment load detection using deep learning for building energy management

Abstract The present work will develop a learning-based approach for a demand-driven control system which can automatically adjust the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) setpoints and supply conditions in terms of the actual requirements of the conditioned space. Internal heat gains from typical office equipment, such as computers, printers and kettle will be the focus of this paper. Due to its irregular use during scheduled heating or cooling service periods, an opportunity is offered to reduce unnecessary energy demands of HVAC systems related to the actual use of the equipment and its heat gains, i.e. over- and under-utilization of equipment indicate whether interior spaces are required to be conditioned or not. The work will be using deep learning enabled cameras which can locally run trained algorithms to analyse and take action based on how equipment is utilised in a space. This proposed strategy automatically responds to the equipment usage for optimising energy consumption and indoor conditions. The work will compare the performance of the developed approach with a conventional approach such as the use of static heating or cooling profiles. To highlight its capabilities, the approach is applied to detect the equipment usage in a real open plan office and the output (i.e. deep learning profile) is used as input for a building energy simulation model. The initial results showed that while maintaining thermal comfort levels, up to 19% reduction of the annual energy consumption can be achieved by employing the proposed strategy in comparison to conventionally-scheduled HVAC systems, while only focusing on three types of equipment.</jats:p