Abstract
The IEA EBC Annex 68 project on “Indoor Air Quality Design and Control in Low Energy Residential Buildings” has been recently completed. The project considered indoor air pollution loads in dwellings, particularly how such pollutants are emitted in dependency of the hygrothermal conditions: temperature, moisture and air flows. Thus, a proper understanding of the mutual interactions between hygrothermal conditions and pollutants was needed to obtain optimal paradigms for demand-controlled ventilation. The project adopted a similarity approach for modelling the transports of moisture and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in materials, and thereby it was possible to provide a comprehensive set of data and tools whereby the indoor atmospheric conditions of buildings can be optimized, e.g. with respect to the need for ventilation. The paper explains the experimental and modelling approach and presents a summary of the results.
Highlights
Following a one-year preparation phase, the working phase of the Annex 68 project was started in 2016 as a project under the Energy in Buildings and Communities (EBC) Technology Collaboration Programme of the International Energy Agency (IEA)
The project was organized in five subtasks as follows: Subtask 1, “Defining the metrics”, made a literature review of pollutant studies of indoor air quality (IAQ), and proposed a set of performance metrics with respect to IAQ and energy use
The Annex 68 project was conceived based on the IEA ECBCS Annex 41 project on “Whole Building Heat, Air and Moisture Response” (2003-07) [2], which on a room and whole building level clarified the interaction between the hygrothermal conditions of room air and materials
Summary
Following a one-year preparation phase, the working phase of the Annex 68 project was started in 2016 as a project under the Energy in Buildings and Communities (EBC) Technology Collaboration Programme of the International Energy Agency (IEA). The subtask gathered reference cases with focus on building energy performance under high IAQ conditions. Subtask 4, “Strategies for design and control of buildings”, carried out stakeholder analyses with interviews to develop a guide and collection of cases on operational strategies for optimal energy performance and high IAQ in residential buildings. Subtask 5, “Field measurements and case studies”, explained measurement technologies, made new experiments and gathered case studies to analyse and demonstrate residential buildings where IAQ factors have been documented together with an optimal energy use. While the final report from Subtask 1 was completed in 2017, the reports from the other subtasks are in review as of writing of this paper (spring 2020) and will eventually be available through the project homepage www.iea-ebc-annex68.org. This paper will focus on results from Subtask 2 and 3 – how hygrothermal conditions and building physics theory relates to the study on gaseous emissions
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