Buildings In Kuwait Research Articles

Corrigendum for “Indoor and Outdoor Volatile Organic Compounds at Office Buildings in Kuwait”

Corrigendum for “Indoor and Outdoor Volatile Organic Compounds at Office Buildings in Kuwait”

Indoor and Outdoor Volatile Organic Compounds at Office Buildings in Kuwait

A total of 800 indoor (I) and outdoor (O) air samples from eight large office buildings (LOBs) were analyzed for 78 VOCs using the latest sampling and preconcentration technology. Of these VOCs, 73 and 66 were detected in the I and O samples, respectively, at various levels and proportions. The I/O ratios were > 1, and ethanol exhibited the highest ratio of 14.7. The levels of aliphatic hydrocarbons were higher in LOBs located in the southern region of Kuwait, where the majority of industrial activities are located. By contrast, these levels were significantly lower in LOBs located in the northern and far northern regions, where industrial activities are absent. There was evidence of CFCs leaking from HVAC systems in several of the LOBs. BTEX inter-species ratios suggest that vehicular emissions contributed less to the outdoor air composition at the LOB at Jahra compared to other LOBs. Alcohols and carbonyls were the first and second most abundant classes of chemicals, respectively, in the VOC mixtures at the LOBs. None of the VOCs exceeded the recommended air quality limits.

Green Design of Tall Buildings in Kuwait: Obstacles & Opportunities

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent of tall buildings development in Kuwait and to look at the issue of how sustainable and green design principles and strategies are disseminating in the society of tall buildings designers. Specifically the paper investigates how those designers are looking at this issue and what is the drive or incentive behind adopting some of the green design technologies and strategies in their projects. It also looks at the process of designing tall buildings and the obstacles and potential opportunities for making this process green and sustainable. The paper sets forth a hypothesis that green design parameters, such as LEED, may not be directly applicable to the Kuwaiti context. The assumption is a more appropriate system of LEED must be devised for Kuwait, similar to the UAE Green Building Council, for example. While this appropriate system is based on universal rules and guidelines for green design, it must take into consideration, and respect, local systems and conditions. These could be human, cultural, economical and technical. In this paper, the focus is on the designers of tall buildings, since they represent the experts on the matter. The paper uses both quantitative and qualitative data to prove or disprove this hypothesis. The data collection tool used is interview survey with a representative sample of tall buildings designers in Kuwait.

Analysis of impact of daylight time savings on energy use of buildings in Kuwait

In this paper, a detailed simulation-based analysis is conducted to assess the impact of adopting Daylight Saving Time (DST) on the electrical energy use and peak demand in Kuwait. The analysis focused on the impact of DST in the building sector since it represents 90% of electrical energy usage of Kuwait. The simulation results indicate that the adoption of DST has mixed impacts for Kuwait. While the commercial and the governmental sectors may benefit from the DST, the private residences and apartment buildings can see both their annual energy use and peak demand increase slightly by adopting DST. The overall impact of the DST implementation is rather minimal with a slight increase energy use of about 0.07% and a slight reduction in peak demand of 0.14% or about 12 MW based on 2005 electrical peak demand for Kuwait.

Indoor thermal conditions and thermal comfort in air-conditioned domestic buildings in the dry-desert climate of Kuwait

The summer season in the state of Kuwait is long with a mean daily maximum temperature of 45 °C. Domestic air conditioning is generally deployed from the beginning of April to the end of October. This accounts for around 75% of Kuwaiti electrical power consumption. In terms of energy conservation, increasing the thermostat temperature by 1 °C could save about 10% of space cooling energy [1,2]. However, knowledge of indoor domestic temperatures and thermal comfort sensations is important to aid future advice formulation and policy-making related to domestic energy consumption. A field study was therefore conducted during the summers of 2006 and 2007 to investigate the indoor climate and occupants' thermal comfort in 25 air-conditioned domestic buildings in Kuwait. The paper presents statistical data about the indoor environmental conditions in Kuwait domestic residences, together with an analysis of domestic-occupant thermal comfort sensations. With respect to the latter, a total of 111 participants provided 111 sets of physical measurements together with subjective information via questionnaires that were used to collect the data. By using linear regression analysis of responses on the ASHRAE-seven-point thermal sensation scale, the neutral operative temperatures based on Actual Mean Vote (AMV) and Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) were found to be 25.2 °C and 23.3 °C, respectively, in the summer season. Findings from this study provide information about the indoor domestic thermal environment in Kuwait, together with occupant thermal comfort sensations. This knowledge can contribute towards the development of future energy-related design codes for Kuwait.

Smart operation of air-conditioning (A/C) and lighting systems for national load management

In the countries of Arabian Peninsula, demand for electric power, primarily controlled by the air-conditioning (A/C) and generally peaking at 15:00 h, is currently growing well over 5% annually. Adaptations of smart operation of A/C and lighting systems in government and institutional buildings that commonly function between 07:00 h and 14:00 h has been evaluated as a technique for national load management in this paper. Time-of-day control for lighting and A/C systems in line with the building occupancy and pre-closing treatment for the A/C system were implemented in a major government building in Kuwait. Reduction of well over 38% in the peak power demand of 5,250 kW was achieved after 14:00 h, the official closing hour for the building. Also, the pre-closing treatment effectively achieved a reduction of over 5% after 13:00 h. Implementation of these measures in many similar buildings in Kuwait can reduce the national peak power demand by 4%, thereby reducing the need of new power plants by nearly 400 MW; besides achieving considerable reduction in electricity consumption. More importantly, the major savings in electric power and energy can be realised without any expenditure or compromise in comfort quality.

Impact of building shape on thermal performance of office buildings in Kuwait

This paper provides a simplified analysis method to estimate the impact of building shape on energy efficiency of office buildings in Kuwait. The method is based on results obtained from a comprehensive whole building energy simulation analysis. The analysis takes into account several building shapes and forms including rectangular, L-shape, U-shape, and H-shape as well as building aspect ratios, window-to-wall ratios, and glazing types. The simplified method is suitable for architects during preliminary design phase to assess the impact of shape on the energy efficiency of office buildings.

Impact of Solar Model Selection on Building Energy Analysis for Kuwait

This paper summarizes the results of a comparative analysis for four models utilized to predict solar radiation in Kuwait City, Kuwait. The four models include the Kasten model, Zhang and Huang model, Muneer model, and neural network based model. The analysis was based on hourly measured solar data for Kuwait City. The measured hourly solar radiation data are obtained for the year 1994 and include global, direct, and diffuse solar radiations. Nonsolar weather data for the same year and site are obtained from the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Weather files suitable for building energy simulation are developed using measuered data as well as predictions from the four solar models. A series of simulation analysis to determine the impact of solar model selection for the weather file on the energy uses predictions from a whole-building simulation program using office buildings in Kuwait. The results of the validation analysis and the simulation evaluation indicate that Zhang and Huang model is suitable for the predicting hourly solar radiation suitable for energy analysis of buildings in Kuwait.

Building air conditioning system using fuel cell: Case study for Kuwait

Air conditioning machines in Kuwait consume more than 75% of electric energy generated at peak load time. It is in the national interest of Kuwait to decelerate the continuous increase of peak electric power demand. One way to do this is to install for new complexes or high-rise apartments buildings distributed utilities (isolated small power plants), mainly for air conditioning A/C systems. Fuel cells are among the alternatives considered for distributed utilities. This paper discusses the use of commercially available phosphoric acid fuel cell PAFC, known as ONSI P25 to operate air conditioning systems for big buildings in Kuwait. The proposed fuel cell, which is usually delivered with built-in heat exchanger for hot water, is operated by natural gas and uses a propylene glycol-water loop to recover thermal energy. The PAFC has 200 kW nominal electric power capacity, and produces thermal energy of 105 kW thermal energy at 120 °C, and 100 kW at 60 °C. The performance characteristics for the proposed fuel cell are very well documented. In the present study, it is suggested that the fuel cell operates combined mechanical vapor compression and absorption water chillers to utilize the fuel cell full output of electric power and waste heat. Also, to meet the required A/C cooling capacity system by the limited fuel cell power output, it is proposed to use cold storage technique. This allows fuel cell power output to supply the needed energy for average as well as peak A/C system capacity.

Impact of Shelling on RC Frames with and without Infill Walls

The traditional building practices used for the construction of residential buildings in Kuwait proved to be extremely effective in resisting fire and enduring severe structural damage from shelling during the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This paper describes and illustrates how infill walls acted as wall-bearing elements to keep a building standing, even after the loss of supporting members. Two reinforced concrete (RC) frame structures, both of which were subjected to direct shelling and lost main supporting elements, are presented. The first frame does not have infill walls, while the second has them. The difference in behavior between the two cases shows the effectiveness of infill walls in preventing progressive collapse under such abnormal loading. A finite-element technique using the modified interface friction element, which represents the interface between the frame and the infill, is presented herein to explain the behavior of frames with infill walls before and after shelling. The finite-element method gave a good correlation with the actual behavior of the cases investigated.

Measured field performance of aluminium windows in Kuwait

The air infiltration rate is determined for 154 aluminium windows installed in 25 buildings in Kuwait. The influence of window characteristics such as type, dimensions, source of profile, source of workmanship, building function, cost and age has been studied. Air-tightness is determined using portable equipment to pressurize a chamber created on each window and to measure the air flow and pressure increase. The resuls show that aluminium windows in Kuwait have a mean infiltration rate of 13.48 m 3/h/m at 75 Pa, about 3.4 times higher than the ANSI/AAMA maximum limit. The type of window is the main factor influencing performance, with horizontally hinged windows leaking the most, and tilt-and-turn and fixed windows the least. Newly installed windows and those installed in low-cost projects show marginally greater mean air-infiltration values than those in old or prestigious projects; however, the standard deviation is noticeably greater, indicating lower quality control. Windows installed in residential buildings produce lower leakage rates than those in office or public buildings. The volume of air leakage remains the same for sliding windows with different areas, indicating that leakage occurs mostly at the corners; however, leakage increases with area for vertically hinged windows, showing that leakage occurs at the sash/window joint.

Energy and power management in air-conditioned buildings in Kuwait

The rate of increase in energy and peak-power demands in Kuwait for the domestic and public sectors has been very great because of increasing demand for air-conditioning. We discuss conservation measures and present the results of an experimental case study to show the impact of low-cost, timer-control techniques for conserving energy.

Heat Transfer Characteristics of Insulation Materials Available in Kuwait

Several insulation materials are being used in the construction of buildings in Kuwait. In this work the heat transfer characteristics of these insulation materials are being studied. It has been shown that the thermal diffusivity (α) of the insulation materials will significantly influence the characteristics of the heat flow through the material. The results show that materials with high thermal diffusivity, mainly materials with low densities, will have higher peak heat transfer loads than those of higher densities. Thus, the lower the value of (α) the better heat transfer characteristics the material will have.

Power needs of cooling systems in Kuwait and their effects on the utility

Summer indoor comfortable environmental conditions can be maintained inside the buildings in Kuwait only by employing mechanical cooling systems, owing to the prevailing hot climatic conditions in the country. Cooling systems in Kuwait are, generally, of the vapour compression type that depend solely on electricity. The electric power needs of the cooling systems are quite large and they shape the pattern of load demand in the country. In this paper, the electric power needs of the cooling systems in Kuwait are investigated. It is shown that these needs account for an average of 43% of the total annual power consumption. It is also shown that during the month of highest power demand, the cooling systems' needs account for about 67% of the total power consumption. The paper also investigates the effect of the cooling systems on the size of the installed power generation facilities. Finally, the effects of introducing energy conservation measures in future buildings in Kuwait on the projected growth rates of the annual peak load and total power consumption are investigated.