Air Conditioner Manufacturer Research Articles

Assessing the Impact of ASEAN’s Harmonised Minimum Efficiency Performance Standards on AC Manufacturers

Abstract The residential sector in ASEAN is highly dependent on cooling as a primary energy use along with cooking, making up about 82% of the sector’s demand in 2050. Air conditioner (AC) is one of the cooling appliances in ASEAN that will drive energy demand growth in ASEAN. Consequently, this surge in demand also contributes significantly to the region’s CO2 emissions. Recognizing the impact of AC utilisation, energy efficiency in AC is considered the most effective way to propose energy savings and environmental impacts. In order to improve energy efficiency in AC, ASEAN has committed to stringent Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) by achieving a target for a Cooling Seasonal Performance Factor (CSPF) of 3.7 by 2023 and 6.09 by 2025. However, an update of MEPS across the ASEAN region has key two challenges: Firstly, the financial investment required by manufacturers; and secondly, the development and evolution of AC technology. This study aims to utilise Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA) to evaluate the impact of increased MEPS on AC manufacturers in the ASEAN region, with MEPS levels forming the framework for the TEA. The findings from this study offer valuable insights to manufacturers and policymakers, particularly regarding the impact of increased MEPS on AC manufacturers.

Establishment of a Thermal Comfort Model for Young Adults with Physiological Parameters in Cold and Hot Stimulation

From the ASHRAE Global Thermal Comfort Database II, several researchers in East and South Asia utilized personal and environmental variables to establish the thermal comfort model. Body temperatures at several locations were the most utilized personal input. The collected papers from 2003 to 2022 were utilized to analyze the progressive development of the thermal comfort model by using VOSviewer. The results indicate that scant research discusses the relationship between multiple physiological parameters and thermal comfort index under dynamic environments and neutral thermal comfort threshold. Therefore, this study establishes the physiological thermal comfort model under cold and hot environments for young subjects in Asia. The results indicate that people are more sensitive to cold stimulation than hot due to the cold sensors of human skin closing to the surface. The human temperature-regulated mechanism operates spontaneously to manage heat conservation and dissipation during cold/hot stimulation. During cold/hot stimulations, the neutral thermal comfort threshold of three physiological parameters adjusts with the level and properties of the stimulation. For the TSV models established by the single physiological parameter, the forehead skin temperature had a closer relationship with TSV than the other two parameters. However, the TSV model established by the multiple physiological parameters is the closest one to TSV among them all. This information could benefit air conditioner manufacturers and household occupancy decision makers to select a better controlling strategy for air conditioners for saving air-conditioning electricity but not sacrificing dwelling comfort.

Environmental Inventory Analysis for Remanufacturing Initiative: Case Study of Air Conditioner Remanufacturing

Remanufacturing is considered as the most preferable recovery option. The objective of this paper was to identify the environmental inventory of a remanufacturing initiative. A window-mount air conditioner (AC) was selected as a case study to verify the environmental benefits of remanufacturing a product characterized by high energy consumption during its life cycle phases. A life cycle approach was followed. The research aims to provide a reference case in the remanufacturing of products characterized by energy intensive use, of which an AC is one of them. The assessment was conducted with the guidance of the ISO 14044-2006 life cycle assessment (LCA). The significance of this study lies in the fact that it provides an authentic example wherein the environmental inventory of the remanufacturing process is identified and documented. It can be used in further studies to compare the environmental burden of remanufacturing processes to the process of manufacturing a new AC. The developed life cycle analysis can be utilized to help AC manufacturers make decisions about the overall environmental performance of their products if it goes through the remanufacturing cycle.

On the road to digital servitization – The (dis)continuous interplay between business model and digital technology

PurposeThe authors seek to understand the process of digital servitization as a shift of manufacturing companies from the provision of standard products and services to smart solutions. Specifically, the authors focus on changes in the business model (i.e. the value proposition, the value delivery system and the value capture mechanism) for digital servitization.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examine a Chinese air conditioner manufacturer, Gree, who became the global leader with their smart solutions. These solutions included performance-based contracts underpinned by artificial intelligence (AI)-powered air conditioners that automatically adjust to environmental changes and are capable of remote monitoring and servicing thanks to its Internet of things (IoT) technology.FindingsTo successfully offer smart solution value propositions, a manufacturer needs an ecosystem value delivery system composed of suppliers, distributors, partners and customers. Once the ecosystem relationships are well aligned, the manufacturer gains value with multiple value capture mechanisms (i.e. efficiency, accountability, shared customer value and novelty). To arrive at this point, a manufacturer has to pass through different stages that are characterized by both discontinuous and continuous interplay between business models and digital technologies. At the beginning of each stage, new value propositions and value delivery systems are first discontinuously created and then enabled with digital technology. As a result, new value capture mechanisms are activated. Meanwhile, the elements of the existing business model are continuously improved.Research limitations/implicationsBy combining process-perspective and business-model lenses, the authors offer nuanced insights into how digital servitization unfolds.Practical implicationsExecutives can obtain insights into the business model elements, they need to change over the course of digital servitization and how to manage the process.Originality/valueA longitudinal case study of a traditional manufacturer that has achieved stellar success through digital servitization business models development.

Performance simulation of HFC-161 as an alternative refrigerant to HCFC-22 for room air conditioner

According to recent Kigali amendment in 2016, ODS (ozone depleting substances) and high GWP (global warming potential) refrigerants must be phased out. There is need to find an alternative refrigerant for air conditioning applications. This article presents the performance comparison for selected low GWP refrigerants commonly used by different air conditioner manufacturers. A baseline test was conducted on a 5.2 kW air conditioner originally designed for HCFC-22 in psychrometric lab as per Indian standard IS 1391 part 1. Simulation tool was tuned and validated against the experimental results within ± 5% accuracy. Parametric analysis was done using IMST-ART tool for the best suitable configuration of compressor capacity, capillary tube, heat exchangers etc. for maximum energy efficiency. Simulation study concluded that the HFC-161 is an energy efficient and climate friendly alternative since it has zero ODP (ozone depletion potential) and ultra-low GWP of 12 except its flammability issue. European standard EN 378, specifies the limit of about 15 g/m3 for charging HFC-161 in the AC system. For HFC-161, the highest cooling capacity of 5.3 kW is achieved in case 4. The HFC-161 gave 27.2% higher EER compared to HCFC-22 system due to 26.47% lowered power consumption. Discharge temperature of HFC-161 is also lowered in the range of 70 °C to 82 °C compared to selected refrigerants. The required charge for HFC-161 was only 55% of HCFC-22.

A Fuzzy Logic-Based Automation toward Intelligent Air Conditioning Systems

Most of the energy used in residential buildings originates from air conditioners. Meanwhile, air conditioner manufacturers are addressing this issue by the production of efficient air conditioners. However, the convertible frequency air conditioners are expensive, up to 60% higher than the fixed frequency control air conditioners. Besides the human behavior in determining the temperature, setpoint plays an important role regardless of the air conditioners technology used. This study incorporated intelligence in setting up the temperature by means of specially designed remote control. The Tsukamoto fuzzy reasoning was utilized as a decision making system with two inputs, namely the outdoor temperature and the number of occupants. The device used DHT22 as the temperature sensor and HC-SR04 to detect incoming and outgoing occupants. Furthermore, the fuzzy inference system generated infrared signal associated with the temperature setpoint. This signal was received by the air conditioner receiver to adjust the temperature setpoint accordingly. The result of this study showed that the fuzzy inference system determines the temperature setpoint appropriately under variations of surrounding temperature and the number of occupants. The proposed approach yielded a satisfactory perception of thermal comfort and also a promising approach to energy conservation.

A simplified prediction model for energy use of air conditioner in residential buildings based on monitoring data from the cloud platform

The energy use prediction of residential buildings has an increasingly important role in urban energy management. This study proposed a prediction model for the cooling energy use of air conditioners in residential buildings. Large-scale monitoring data of the operation of 1325 air conditioners in Chongqing were collected from the networking cloud platform of an air conditioner manufacturer, including setting parameters by occupants, indoor environmental parameters, time parameters and energy use parameters. The historical monitoring data of previous week before the forecast day, the meteorological data of the forecast day and the apparatus parameters of AC were employed as the original data set in this study. Feature selection engineering, including correlation analysis, importance analysis and collinearity analysis, were performed in sequence to select the most correlated and important input features for energy use prediction. Afterwards, prediction models that use four ensemble learning methods and two single learning methods were developed and compared by evaluation metrics. The best model for prediction was proposed. The results show that eleven input features have a great relationship to the daily cooling energy use and were considered the inputs to the prediction model. The XGBoost model was chosen as the best model in this study. The proposed prediction model can help researchers understand which historical features are important for the future daily cooling energy use prediction of AC. This prediction model can provide some references for different groups to implement energy management for residential buildings.

Eco-Cost Analysis of Split Air-Conditioner Using Activity-Based Costing Method

Split air conditioner (SAC) plays a critical role for temperature control of buildings. In recent years, the manufacturing process of SAC tends to consider energy-saving and environmental protection factors to reduce air pollution and alleviate energy crisis. However, the design of environmental-friendly SAC will increase the manufacturing cost, thereby increasing the burden on air-conditioning companies. Therefore, the eco-cost analysis of SAC is of great significance for air conditioner manufacturers. To this end, a new SAC eco-cost assessment method based on activity based costing method is innovatively proposed in this paper. In this method, a K-nearest neighbor algorithm is used to deal with the missing data in SAC samples. An environmental and non-environmental cost assessment approach is developed based on the activity-based costing method to estimate the eco-cost of SAC over its whole life cycle. In addition, the impact of energy efficiency deviation on SAC eco-cost is numerically analyzed. Finally, the proposed eco-cost assessment method is programmed on a Gabi software, and validated using real SAC data from a Chinese air-conditioning company. Simulation results show that the proposed method can provide an estimate of the eco-cost of SAC, thus helping air-conditioning companies to improve their competitiveness in the future where energy-saving and emission reduction are increasingly important.

IoT edge computing-enabled collaborative tracking system for manufacturing resources in industrial park

In manufacturing industry, the movement of manufacturing resources in production logistics often affects the overall efficiency. This research is motivated by a world-leading air-conditioner manufacturer. In order to provide the right manufacturing resources for subsequent production steps, excessive time and human effort has been consumed in locating the manufacturing resources in a huge industrial park. The development of Internet of Things (IoT) has made a profound impact on establish smart manufacturing workshop and tracking applications, however a growing trend of data quantity that generated from massive, heterogeneous and bottomed manufacturing resources objects pose challenge to centralized decision. In this study, the concept of edge-computing deeply integrated in collaborative tracking purpose in virtue of IoT technology. An IoT edge computing enabled collaborative tracking architecture is developed to offload the computation pressure and realize distributed decision making. A supervised learning of genetic tracking method is innovatively presented to ensure tracking accuracy and effectiveness. Finally, the research output is developed and implemented in a real-life industrial park for verification. The results show that the proposed tracking method not only performs constant improving accuracy up to 96.14% after learning compared to other tracking method, but also ensure quick responsiveness and scalability.

Optimization of the Orifice Shape of Cooling Fan Units for High Flow Rate and Low-Level Noise in Outdoor Air Conditioning Units

Demand for air conditioners is steadily increasing due to global warming and improved living standards. The noise, as well as the performance of air conditioners, are recognized as one of the crucial factors that determine the air conditioners’ values. The performance and noise of the air conditioner are mostly determined by those of its outdoor unit, which in turn depend on those of the cooling fan unit. Therefore, a cooling fan unit of high-performance and low noise is essential for air-conditioner manufacturers and developers. In this paper, the flow performance and flow noise of the entire outdoor unit with an axial cooling fan in a split-type air-conditioner were investigated. First, a virtual fan tester constructed by using about 18 million grids is developed for highly resolved flow simulation. The unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes equations are numerically solved by using finite-volume computational fluid dynamics techniques. To verify the validity of the numerical analysis, the predicted P–Q curve of the cooling fan in a full outdoor unit is compared with the measured one. There was an excellent agreement between the two curves. The further detailed analysis identifies the coherent vortex structures between the fan blade tip and fan orifice, which adversely affect the flow performance and causes flow noise. Based on this analysis, the optimization of fan orifice was carried out using the response surface method with three geometric parameters: inlet radius, neck length, and outlet angel of the orifice. The optimum layout for the high flow rate is proposed under the understanding that the increased flow rate can be converted to noise reduction. The additional computation using the proposed optimum orifice shows that the flow rate is increased by 4.6% at the operating point. Finally, the engineering sample was manufactured by using the optimum design, and the measured data confirmed that the flow rate were increased by 2.1%, the noise reduction was made by 2.8 dBA, and the power consumption is reduced by 4.0% at the operating rotational speed.

Improving the energy efficiency of room air conditioners in China: Costs and benefits

China is the world’s largest consumer of room air conditioners, and it contributes about a quarter of global space cooling CO2 emissions. We model the costs and benefits of recently proposed new room air conditioner minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) in China. Our results suggest that newly proposed MEPS brings accumulative CO2 emissions reductions of 12.8% between 2019 and 2050, and accumulative bill saving of 2620 billion RMB to China's consumers. The benefits of the proposed MEPS decrease with longer MEPS revision intervals and increase with shorter intervals—indicating that the intervals should be balanced to maximize benefits while accommodating constraints due to air conditioner manufacturer design cycles. We also model potential nationwide benefits from higher MEPS. Across two increasingly aggressive MEPS scenarios, China’s room air conditioner electricity consumption and CO2 emissions in 2050 are both reduced by 15–53% compared to the proposed MEPS. The highest-efficiency scenario (reaching MEPS of annual performance factor 5.4 in 2025) provides the largest long-term national benefits. These results could inform development of a Chinese regulatory regime that effectively updates room air conditioner MEPS. Because China is the world’s largest manufacturer of room air conditioners, the economic, energy, and emissions benefits resulting from higher Chinese MEPS could also have a global reach.

A Rough Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach for Sustainable Supplier Selection under Vague Environment

With the growing awareness of environmental and social issues, sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has received considerable attention both in academia and industry. Supplier selection plays an important role in the successful implementation of sustainable supply chain management, because it can influence the performance of SSCM. Sustainable supplier selection is a typical multi-criteria decision-making problem involving subjectivity and vagueness. Although some previous researches of supplier selection use fuzzy approaches to deal with vague information, it has been criticized for requiring much priori information and inflexibility in manipulating vagueness. Moreover, the previous methods often omit the environmental and social evaluation criteria in the supplier selection. To manipulate these problems, a new approach based on the rough set theory and ELECTRE (ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité) is developed in this paper. The novel approach integrates the strength of rough set theory in handling vagueness without much priori information and the merit of ELECTRE in modeling multi-criteria decision-making problem. Finally, a case study of sustainable supplier selection for solar air-conditioner manufacturer is provided to demonstrate the application and potential of the approach.

Product carbon footprint assessment supporting the green supply chain construction in household appliance manufacturers

Supply chain carbon emission is one of the factors considered in the green supply chain management. A method was designed to support the green supply chain measures based on the carbon footprint assessment for products. A research for 3 typical household appliances carbon footprint assessment was conducted to explore using product carbon footprint assessment method to guide the green supply chain management of the manufacturers. The result could reflect the differences directions on green supply chain management of manufacturers of washing machine, air conditioner and microwave, respectively That is, the washing machine manufacturer should pay attention to the low carbon activities in upstream suppliers in highest priority, and also the promotion of product energy efficiency. The air conditioner manufacturer should pay attention to the product energy efficiency increasing in highest priority, and the improvement of refrigerant to decrease its GWP. And the microwave manufacture could only focus on the energy efficiency increasing because it contributes most of the carbon emission to its carbon footprint. Besides, the representativeness of product and the applicability of the method were also discussed. As the manufacturer could master the technical information on raw material and components of its products to conduct the product carbon footprint assessment, this method could help the manufacturer to identify the effective green supply chain measures in the preliminary stage.

Simulation-Based Performance Analysis of Split Air Conditioner Incorporating Copper Tubes of Smaller Diameter

Increasing cost of copper material has forced air conditioner manufacturers to lower copper consumption or focus on alternative materials in air conditioning applications in order to stand at upright position in cost competitive environment. Since copper possesses most of the well-suited characteristics that are needed for the air conditioning system, choice of reducing copper material is preferred over alternative materials. Present study focuses on simulation-based design methodology and performance analysis of split air conditioning system with R32 as a refrigerant. It includes replacement of 7[Formula: see text]mm outside diameter condenser coil with 5[Formula: see text]mm diameter copper tubes. Simulation technique for investigating optimal condenser coil geometry incorporating smaller diameter tubes is also demonstrated for typical air conditioning system. Simulation results show that cost of condenser coil with reduced tube diameter is much lower than that of existing coil of higher tube diameter without any compromise in the performance of air conditioning system.

Green supply chain coordination with greenhouse gases emissions management: a game-theoretic approach

The negative impact of greenhouse gases emissions on the environment has recently received considerable attention by both industry and academia. Companies and researchers strive to find new and innovative methods to reduce greenhouse gases emissions across all the stages of their green supply chains. The previous studies generally, employed integrated models for greenhouse gases emissions management in green supply chains. These models neglected the conflict and coordination among different supply chain members. Furthermore, as important practices to make the companies more adapted for the environment, product design, supplier selection, and logistics process are seldom studied in previous research. In this paper, we consider a green supply chain with multiple suppliers, a single manufacturer and multiple retailers. A game-theoretic model is established to simultaneously investigate the impacts of the product line design, supplier selection, transportation mode selection and pricing strategies on profits and greenhouse gases emissions. Genetic algorithm is applied to obtain the solution of this model. The proposed model and generated results can provide decision makers with a better tradeoff between profit and environmental impacts. A case study of air conditioner manufacturer in China is performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. Several interesting findings are accordingly obtained.

Carbon Emission Assessment for Typical Household Appliances Orienting the Green Supply Chain Management for Enterprises

This paper explores on the green supply chain management for enterprises based on the carbon emission assessment for products. The assessment showed that the priorities of green supply chain management measures were different for washing machine, air conditioner and microwave. The washing machine manufacturer should firstly focus on the measures to the upstream suppliers associated with the product eco-design, and secondly the product energy efficiency increase. The air conditioner manufacturer should first focus on the product energy efficiency increase, and secondly the eco-design, especially the refrigerant improvement. But the energy efficiency increase would be the only effective way for microwave. This work shows the method applies to the household appliance manufacturer to identify the green supply chain hot point, as the information of products is easier to obtain, and the effort performance could be shown intuitively along with the consuming process.

A portfolio approach to managing procurement risk using multi-stage stochastic programming

Procurement is a critical supply chain management function that is susceptible to risk, due mainly to uncertain customer demand and purchase price volatility. A procurement approach in the form of a portfolio that incorporates the common procurement means is proposed. Such means include long-term contracts, spot procurements and option-based supply contracts. The objective is to explore possible synergies among the various procurement means, and so be able to produce optimal or near optimal results in profit while mitigating risk. The implementation of the portfolio approach is based on a multi-stage stochastic programming model in which replenishment decisions are made at various stages along a time horizon, with replenishment quantities being determined by simultaneously considering the stochastic demand and the price volatility of the spot market. The model attempts to minimise the risk exposure of procurement decisions measured as conditional value-at-risk. Numerical experiments to test the effectiveness of the proposed model are performed using demand data from a large air conditioner manufacturer in China and price volatility data from the Shanghai steel market. The results indicate that the proposed model can fairly reliably outperform other approaches, especially when either the demand and/or prices exhibit significant variability.

A case of implementing RFID-based real-time shop-floor material management for household electrical appliance manufacturers

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies provide automatic and accurate object data capturing capability and enable real-time object visibility and traceability. Potential benefits have been widely reported for improving manufacturing shop-floor management. However, reports on how such potentials come true in real-life shop-floor daily operations are very limited. As a result, skeptics overwhelm enthusiasm. This paper contributes to the re-vitalization of RFID efforts in manufacturing industries by presenting a real-life case study of applying RFID for managing material distribution in a complex assembly shop-floor at a large air conditioner manufacturer. The case study discusses how technical, social and organizational issues have been addressed throughout the project within the company. It is hoped that insights and lessons gained be generalized for future efforts across household electrical appliance manufacturers that share similar shop-floor.

The study of energy-saving strategy for direct expansion air conditioning system

Most air conditioning, energy-saving research has focused on the chiller system, the most effective energy-saving procedure of its kind would be the use of forced downtime or load shedding control methods. However, the use of forced downtime control methods on direct expansion systems, while saving energy, would be at the expense of increasing room temperature, leading to the discomfort of the inhabitants. This research focused on the direct expansion system and used periodic downtime control methods to execute energy-saving procedures, thus providing reasonable temperature control and saving energy at the same time. According to the results, by reducing the periodic downtime, we can improve unstable temperature problems; i.e. operating for 15 min and downtime for 5 min, provided the optimal energy-saving efficiency, saving 21.66% of energy. However, the percentage of high room temperatures during this downtime period was 40.43%, this meant that if we wanted to save energy, we would have to sacrifice comfort; if we wanted more comfort, then we have to select an operating mode that was secondary to operating for 10 min and downtime for 5 min. We also discovered that if the air conditioner manufacturer modified the embedded program and adjusted the limit for upper temperatures of the settings upward by 1 °C, users would save 7.22% of energy; this was a procedure that was more direct and effective than any other energy-saving requisition.

High-Efficiency Rooftop Air Conditioners: Small Commercial ACs Could Add Up to Big Energy Savings

ABSTRACT This article describes a technology procurement conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and the Defense Logistics Agency to increase the availability of energy-efficient, packaged unitary “rooftop” air conditioners. The procurement encourages air conditioner manufacturers to produce equipment that exceeds federal energy efficiency standards by at least 25 percent at a lower life-cycle cost. Program developers have also sought to aggregate market demand by organizing groups of large-volume buyers of air-conditioning equipment. A cost estimator tool developed by PNNL to help consumers determine the cost-effectiveness, based on local climate conditions, of purchasing energy-efficient air conditioners for their own facilities also is described.