Performance analysis of interactive cascade ventilation combined with solar energy for the epidemic prevention and control

Abstract

Increasing low-grade and renewable energy sources in the HVAC systems has become necessary to reduce heating energy consumption. Hence, seeking a new air conditioning system that can be combined with renewable energy is significant to maintain a healthy and comfortable indoor environment with a low cost. This paper proposes a novel air source heat pumps assisted solar hot water with interactive cascade ventilation system (shortened as SWAP-ICV). Taking the traditional air source heat pumps with mixing ventilation system (AP-MV) as a reference, the virus control performance and energy efficiency of SWAP-ICV is investigated through CFD and TRNSYS simulations. The results demonstrate that interactive cascade ventilation under full-fresh air operation mode and normal-epidemic linkage mode can make the annual infection risk reduce by 41.16% and 9.33% compared with mixing ventilation under full-fresh air operation mode. Meanwhile, the proposed system can reduce energy consumption by 59.92% and 69.8% during the normal period and epidemic period by introducing solar energy. The average system COP during the heating season indicates that SWAP-ICV can improve the system efficiency by 1.9–2.58 times than AP-MV system. The conclusions obtained from this research can provide new ideas for the design and operation of air conditioning systems in the post-epidemic era.