Performance Analysis of an Integrated Solar Dehumidification System with HVAC in A Typical Corner Store in the USA

Fahad A Almehmadi,Kevin P Hallinan

doi:10.3390/su12104068

Abstract

Food deserts have emerged in underserved urban and rural areas throughout the United States. Corner markets have filled the food voids, but generally without offering residents access to healthy food. The economics for doing so are prohibitive. The purpose of the study is to investigate an opportunity for reducing corner store energy costs in order to make possible retail of fresh produce and meat. Given the typical dominance of refrigeration to the energy cost in such stores, an integrated solar dehumidification system with heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is considered. A typical corner store baseline reliant upon conventional refrigeration and HVAC equipment is defined to serve as a basis for comparison. MATLAB Simulink dynamic models are developed for the posed system and baseline model. The results show energy reduction in the refrigerated cabinets of maximally 28%, 27%, and 20%, respectively, in Dayton, OH, Phoenix, AZ, and Pine Bluff, AR. The respective HVAC energy savings are respectively 28%, 56%, and 4%. Collectively these correspond to total annual energy savings of 43%, 51%, and 53%, translating to annual energy cost savings of greater than $12K in all locations.

Highlights

The social disparity in health is extreme, as has been remarkably seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the urban poor death rate is substantially greater than the population at large due to the higher preponderance of pre-existing conditions in these communities
Some reduction in HVAC capacity is included in the price estimates
The initial investment of the system is varied between the selected cities. These variations are due to the size of the HVAC, availability of the solar resources, and the required auxiliary energy

Summary

Introduction

Poor urban and rural areas throughout the United States have increasingly seen large groceries and supermarkets go out of business or move. Created in the aftermath of these closings are what has been termed food deserts, where people in large sections of cities do not have access to healthier food. The social disparity in health is extreme, as has been remarkably seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the urban poor death rate is substantially greater than the population at large due to the higher preponderance of pre-existing conditions in these communities. The death rate from COVID-19 in food deserts account for more than 70% of coronavirus deaths in the city of Chicago [2]. In Chicago, the death rate from diabetes in a food desert is twice that of regions with access to healthier food [3]

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Conclusion