Improving HVAC system performance: Towards the design of sustainable and immune buildings

Abstract

Superstructures, shopping centers and/or highrise buildings are becoming part of todays city landscapes. On the one hand, concerns about occupants health, comfort, energy consumption and environment are becoming a main design consideration for these buildings ventilation systems, and, on the other hand, threats to public safety and security such as the intentional and/or non-intentional release of chemical and other agents into indoor environments have become imminent in everyday life. Thus, designers now, need to integrate in their design not only consideration for the occupants comfort and building energy consumption but also occupants health and safety. Activated carbon filters have been used for purification of air and water in industrial applications. However these technologies have not been applied to the non-industrial built environment in general and there is no standard to quantify or to classify the performance of these systems for in-duct mechanical system application. The development of a standard testing procedure and design tool are a very timely effort, since it would create a benchmark for evaluating the contaminant reduction and energy savings of these systems. This paper first describes the experimental set-up for testing activated carbon filters for in-duct mechanical system application, presents the experimental results of twelve different activated carbon filters, then discusses the recommendations for the future works.