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Conventional heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are incapable of providing control over individual environments or adjusting fresh air supply based on the dynamic occupancy of individual rooms in an office building. This paper introduces the concept of distributed environmental control systems (DECS) and shows that improvement in indoor air quality (IAQ) and energy efficiency can be achieved by providing required amounts of fresh air directly to the individual office spaces through distributed demand controlled ventilation (DDCV). In DDCV, fresh air is provided to each micro-environment (room or cubicle) based on input from distributed sensors (CO2, VOC, occupancy, etc.) or intelligent scheduling techniques to provide acceptable IAQ for each occupant, rather than for groups or populations of occupants. In order to study DECS, a numerical model was developed that incorporates some of the best available models for studying building energy consumption, indoor air flow, contaminant transport and HVAC system performance. The developed model was applied to a DECS in a model office building equipped with a DDCV system. By implementing DECS/DDCV and intelligent scheduling techniques it is possible to achieve an improvement in IAQ along with a reduction in annual energy consumption compared to conventional ventilation systems.
The research described herein has been performed under US EPA grant/cooperative agreement Award #CR-83269001-0 to Syracuse University. Although this research has been funded wholly or in part by the US EPA, it has not been subjected to the Agency’s required peer and policy review; and therefore, does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency and no official endorsement should be inferred. Additional support has been provided by the NYSTAR- Awarded STAR Center for Environmental Quality Systems, and the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems. We would also like to acknowledge Ian Cosden for his work on the development of the thermal circuit model.