AREN 4110/5110 BUILDING ENERGY SYSTEMS ENGINEERING Spring 2024 PROJECT 3: CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF BUILDING ENERGY SYSTEMS Project Description The final project for this course will involve the conceptual design of an HVAC system for a building. Rather than focus on the detailed calculations of loads, equipment selection, and component sizing, this project will focus on the consideration of different types of systems to meet the design requirements. You will specifically be asked to explore the opportunities and risks of one or more low-energy systems, de- velop a conceptual design of a system for the application, and compare the expected performance with more conventional approaches. For this project, you have been charged with developing system strategies for heating, cooling, dehumidi- fying, humidifying, and ventilating small regional museums, proposed as part of a UNESCO program to promote the repatriation and relocation of artwork and artifacts previously held in large metropolitan mu- seums far away from the site of origin. Specifically, the objectives are to better connect visitors with the local historical context of the artwork and artifacts, reduce concentration of mass tourism by promoting a more distributed network of touristic destinations, and more equitably share the economic benefits of tourism across a country. Coincidentally, these museums would be ideal recipients of artwork and arti- facts previously held in mostly Western museums and considered for repatriation. Each group is assigned a geographic location according to the following table: GROUP 1 2 3 4 LOCATION Fairbanks, Alaska St. John's, Newfoundland Luxor, Egypt Timbuktu, Mali Nizwa, Oman 5 10 6 Darwin, Australia 7 Pokhara, Nepal 8 Chiang Mai, Thailand 9 Nelson, New Zealand 10 Quito, Ecuador 11 Ouro Preto, Brazil 12 Maputo, Mozambique The detailed architectural design has not yet been developed, but the overall floorspace is 5,000 m² over two stories, with roughly 3000 m² of exhibit space, 1000 m² of storage, 500 m² of administrative and classroom space, 300 m² circulation space, and 200 m² cafeteria with cooking facilities to serve staff and visitors with breakfast and lunch. A small portion of the floor area will be designed to accommodate art- work with tight constraints on environmental conditions with specialized equipment serving this portion, designed by specialty engineering consultants and outside the project scope. In contrast, more than 90% of the museum is conditioned to less stringent comfort conditioning requirements, which are temperatures between 21-24°C and relative humidity between 30-50%. APRIL 18, 2024 PAGE 1 OF 3 AREN 4110/5110 BUILDING ENERGY SYSTEMS ENGINEERING Spring 2024 Potential Technologies Your HVAC system should seek to be highly energy efficient. You might include any combination of the following technologies: • • Demand controlled ventilation Airside and waterside economizers Displacement ventilation or underfloor air distribution Indirect or direct evaporative cooling Heat recovery for outdoor air preconditioning Ground loop system with individual water loop heat pumps in the zones Ground source heat pumps to heat and cool water for building circulation Dedicated outdoor air system (DOAS) with demand-controlled ventilation Chilled beams Radiant heating and cooling with DOAS • Desiccant cooling and dehumidification systems • Thermal energy storage systems Heat recovery between different processes, e.g., from space cooling to preheat DHW needs Approach The main objective is to minimize building energy use while meeting the heating, cooling, dehumidifica- tion, humidification, and ventilation needs of the building. You should consider the following steps in your process: 1. Each team has a different location and, in most cases, a different climate. Your first task is to evaluate the characteristics of the climate to explore systems that take advantage of environmen- tal conditions. For example, evaporative cooling would not be a good choice for Miami, natural ventilation would have limited use in Phoenix, and a desiccant dehumidification system would not make much sense in Denver. There are many tools available, especially those targeted at ar- chitects. Climate Consultant is a useful tool for the analysis and is available at https://www.sbse.org/resources/climate-consultant. 2. Develop a proposal for an HVAC system design for your building needs. The system must meet all heating, cooling, dehumidification, humidification, and ventilation needs of the building at de- sign conditions. It must also demonstrate low annual energy consumption. You should explore the rich literature of design practices and case studies on climate sensitive design of building en- ergy systems for inspiration and insights. For example, explore https://www.wbdg.org/additional- resources/case-studies. 3. You should seek to evaluate the opportunities for energy savings over a conventional VAV HVAC system. Ideally, you would be able to perform an annual energy analysis of both your sys- tem and the conventional baseline system using one of several building energy modeling tools. However, this course intentionally avoided commercial modeling tools and you are not expected to learn them at this point in the course. Rather, you should examine the engineering literature for case studies or other sources of insight into potential savings. You should describe your energy performance in terms of the energy use intensity (EUI) expressed as annual energy use per square meter of building floor area in units of kWh/m². You should also consider the annual en- ergy cost savings and the reported cost premium of the proposed system over a conventional sys- tem. 4. Identify commercially available products for your selected HVAC system. Who makes them? What are their features? APRIL 18, 2024 PAGE 2 OF 3 AREN 4110/5110 BUILDING ENERGY SYSTEMS ENGINEERING Spring 2024 There are many resources available for your project. We strongly encourage you to examine the ASHRAE Advanced Energy Design Guides that are available for free download from the ASHRAE web- site (https://ashrae.org/technical-resources/aedgs). The most relevant would be the zero energy guide for small to medium office buildings. The US Department of Energy also has considerable resources on their websites. Deliverables Your deliverable should be a PowerPoint presentation describing your work. The presentation should include a description of your climate and the HVAC needs of the building, description and schematic dia- gram of the proposed HVAC system, description and justification of how the proposed system will meet all the HVAC needs of the building, the opportunities for energy or cost savings over conventional tech- nologies, and a description of specific products available. Each team must include an estimate of the po- tential annual energy savings over a conventional system of VAV air handlers with overhead diffusers, air-cooled chiller, and gas hot water boiler. Each team will prepare an eight-minute presentation to be delivered during the final exam period You are asked to take advantage of the Notes section of the page to meaningfully supple- ment the screen image with supporting information. APRIL 18, 2024 PAGE 3 OF 3