Rim Donghyun, Schiavon Stefano, Nazaroff William W
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2015 Mar 30;10(3):e0122310. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122310. eCollection 2015.
Providing sufficient amounts of outdoor air to occupants is a critical building function for supporting occupant health, well-being and productivity. In tropical climates, high ventilation rates require substantial amounts of energy to cool and dehumidify supply air. This study evaluates the energy consumption and associated cost for thermally conditioning outdoor air provided for building ventilation in tropical climates, considering Singapore as an example locale. We investigated the influence on energy consumption and cost of the following factors: outdoor air temperature and humidity, ventilation rate (L/s per person), indoor air temperature and humidity, air conditioning system coefficient of performance (COP), and cost of electricity. Results show that dehumidification of outdoor air accounts for more than 80% of the energy needed for building ventilation in Singapore's tropical climate. Improved system performance and/or a small increase in the indoor temperature set point would permit relatively large ventilation rates (such as 25 L/s per person) at modest or no cost increment. Overall, even in a thermally demanding tropical climate, the energy cost associated with increasing ventilation rate up to 25 L/s per person is less than 1% of the wages of an office worker in an advanced economy like Singapore's. This result implies that the benefits of increasing outdoor air ventilation rate up to 25 L/s per person--which is suggested to provide for productivity increases, lower sick building syndrome symptom prevalence, and reduced sick leave--can be much larger than the incremental cost of ventilation.
为居住者提供充足的室外空气是支持居住者健康、幸福和生产力的一项关键建筑功能。在热带气候中，高通风率需要大量能源来冷却和除湿供应空气。本研究以新加坡为例，评估了热带气候下为建筑通风提供的室外空气进行热调节的能源消耗及相关成本。我们研究了以下因素对能源消耗和成本的影响：室外空气温度和湿度、通风率（每人升/秒）、室内空气温度和湿度、空调系统性能系数（COP）以及电费。结果表明，在新加坡的热带气候下，室外空气的除湿占建筑通风所需能源的80%以上。系统性能的提升和/或室内温度设定点的小幅提高将允许以适度的成本增量或无需成本增量实现相对较高的通风率（如每人25升/秒）。总体而言，即使在对热量需求较高的热带气候中，将通风率提高到每人25升/秒所产生的能源成本不到新加坡这样的发达经济体中办公室工作人员工资的1%。这一结果表明，将室外空气通风率提高到每人25升/秒所带来的好处——这被认为可以提高生产力、降低病态建筑综合症症状的患病率并减少病假——可能远大于通风的增量成本。
