Combined Heat, Air, Moisture, and Pollutants Transport in Building Environmental Systems

Abstract

Combined heat, air, moisture and pollutants transport (CHAMP) exists across multi-scales of a building environmental system (BES): around the building, through the building shell/envelope, inside a multizone building, and in the micro-environments around occupants. This paper reviews previous work and presents a system model for simulating these transport processes and their impacts on indoor environmental quality. Components of the system model include a multizone network flow model for whole building, a room model for air and pollutant movement in ventilated spaces, a coupled heat, air, moisture, and pollutant transport model for building shell, an HVAC model for describing the dynamics of the heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) system, and shared databases of weather conditions, transport properties of building materials, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emissions from building materials and furnishings. The interactions among the different components, and challenges in developing the CHAMP system model for intelligent control of BES are also discussed.