Abstract
All over the world, there is a call to encourage sustainable energy thinking and implementation. There is an urgent need to consider sustainable solutions in any design projects that are able to reduce energy consumption. In the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning field, the rise of the variable refrigerant flow systems has made big progress. This study presents a life cycle cost analysis to evaluate the economic feasibility of constant refrigerant flow (CRF), and in particular, the conventional ducted unit air conditioning system and the variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system by using detailed cooling load profiles, as well as initial, operating, and maintenance costs. Two operating hours scenarios are utilized and the present worth value technique for life cycle cost analysis is applied to an existing office building located in Qatar, which can be conditioned by CRF and VRF systems. The results indicate that, although the initial cost of the VRF system is higher than that of the CRF system by 23%, the present worth cost of the VRF system is much lower than that of the CRF system at the end of the lifetime due to lower operating costs. There is also a significant energy saving of 27% by using VRF compared to the CRF. The implementation of these results on a national scale will promote the use of sustainable energy technologies such as the VRF system.
Highlights
Designing and selecting air conditioning systems involves many factors to be considered and these factors differ depending on the type of application
The variable refrigerant flow (VRF) cost is higher at the beginning, but after a certain number of years the VRF system becomes more economically efficient
When comparing the VRF and constant refrigerant flow (CRF) systems in this study, the initial, operating, and maintenance costs were for Al
Summary
Designing and selecting air conditioning systems involves many factors to be considered and these factors differ depending on the type of application. The primary goal in designing air conditioning systems is to provide thermal comfort with good indoor air quality while ensuring low energy consumption [1]. In a study published by the U.S. of the overall electricity consumption in the U.S From this, the major energy consumption in these buildings is for heating, ventilating, and air conditioning, which accounts for 35%. Of the total building energy [2]. In arid countries, such as those in the Gulf Cooperation. Council (GCC), most of the energy in the building (commercial and residential) is used for cooling due to the extreme high temperature climate during summer, which typically lasts around 8 months. Typical temperatures in the summer are in the high 40 ◦ Cs to low 50 ◦ Cs
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