Numerical Investigations of Air Flow Patterns and Thermal Comfort in an Ice-Cream Factory Conditioned by Conventional Air Conditioning or Radiant Cooling Systems

Abstract

Cooling nonresidential buildings in contributes significantly to electrical power consumption and peak power demand. Part of the electrical energy used to cool buildings is drawn by fans transporting cool air through the ducts. The typical thermal cooling peak load component for office buildings can be divided as follows: 31% for lighting, 13% for people, 14% for air transport, and 6% for equipment (these account for 62.5% of the electrical peak load, labeled chiller). Approximately 37% of the electrical peak power is required for air transport, and the remainder is necessary to operate the compressor. The present thesis is devoted to numerically investigate the difference between using conventional air conditioning and radiant cooling to remove a huge heat load from an Ice Cream factory, this load dissipated from 8 equipments. The work focuses on air flow patterns, and thermal behavior in this factory. The effectiveness of an air flow system is commonly assessed by the successful removal of that heat load from the equipments area in the factory and to improve the indoor air quality; this is the main target during the present thesis work. The study is carried out using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation techniques as embedded in the commercially available CFD code (FLUENT 6.2).