ASHRAE Journal - October 2011 - 67

This project will have four parts; 1) The project team will develop a list of equipment types and system approaches that can provide humidity control in residential buildings, with emphasis on all types of humid climates. Project team will examine ﬁeld data from Building America and other sources to identify promising approaches to humidity control. 2) The project team will perform limited model development in areas where gaps remain in the ability to model latent performance of some systems. 3) The project team will perform computer simulation studies of humidity control approaches and system options in small buildings as a function of system type, building load characteristics, and ventilation rates for a range of climates in IECC/DOE climate zones 1 through 6 in the Moist (A) portion of the climate zone map. A range of occupancy loads will be simulated. Results will be normalized to weather conditions. 4) Efﬁciency and cost analysis will be performed as part of this project in order to provide clear ranking of the ability and effectiveness of various approaches and technologies to achieve indoor RH control. The results will help design engineers specify the most cost-effective means of providing humidity control in homes. Understanding the most critical factors inﬂuencing the performance will help manufacturers provide contractors with the installation requirements necessary to achieve high performance. Developers of codes and standards will be able to utilize the results to specify systems appropriate to their locations. Due to the current high level of interest in humidity control, especially for the purpose of preventing mold growth, it is expected that manufacturers will respond to the results quickly, developing and marketing the most effective technologies to contractors and residents. Code and standard developers in locations with widespread humidity concerns should also be able to respond to the results quickly, allowing for the pace typical of code and standard development.

ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 52.2-2007 to verify that their MERV rating procedure provides the value intended. The calibration particle size will range from 0.3 to 10 microns and the pressure drop will not exceed 1.5 in. of water at the calibrated ﬂow rate that will be in the range of 450 to 2000 cfm. The contractor also agrees to provide at least ﬁve exact copies of this device to testing laboratories that request them on a unit cost basis providing the cost of each does not exceed $10,000. This would provide test laboratories a means of checking their entire test facility and protocols for compliance with the intent of the Standard.

1467-RP

Balancing Latent Heat Load Between Display Cases and Store Comfort Cooling

September 2009 – August 2011; University of Colorado; Principal Investigator, Michael Brandemuehl; TC 10.7, Commercial Food and Beverage Cooling Display and Storage; AHRTI $84,000 co-funder

1455-RP Advanced Control Sequences for HVAC Systems – Phase I Air Distribution and Terminal Systems
April 2009 – February 2013; Taylor Engineering, LLC.; Principal Investigator, Mark Hydeman; TC 1.4, Control Theory and Application

Supermarket energy costs for heating, cooling, dehumidiﬁcation, and refrigeration are a major store operating cost and often exceed store proﬁts. While most of this cost is associated with maintaining refrigerated conditions for products, much is also spent to maintain suitable environmental conditions in the supermarket sales area. Each of these requirements is inexorably linked to the other. Failure to control store temperature and humidity can cause excessive energy consumption by refrigeration equipment and hamper product marketing due to frost build-up on frozen products and fogging of display cases. Conversely, most of the energy used to operate the refrigeration equipment serves to reduce the building cooling and dehumidiﬁcation requirements. The overall objective of this project is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the potential for energy savings in supermarkets by optimized design and operation of the combined HVAC and refrigeration systems. The assessment will include the effects of climate, space temperature and humidity set-point controls, HVAC system type and characteristics, and the design and operation of the refrigerated cases. Furthermore, the project will address the overall layout of HVAC and refrigeration system components in supermarkets, including HVAC zoning, the location of supply and return air, and the overall air distribution patterns in the supermarket.

This research project is intended to be the ﬁrst of two phases: Phase I: Air Distribution and Terminal Systems and Phase II: Central Plants and Hydronic Systems. This ﬁrst phase will include developing comprehensive optimized control sequences for the following common air distribution and terminal subsystems: Generic thermal zones, Single zone systems, Variable air volume terminal units, and Variable air volume systems. Logic diagrams will be developed for the sequences so that the logic is not vague, as is inherent in any written sequence. Sequences will be tested and debugged using simulation. Future research projects will be implemented to test the sequences in real buildings. Once the research project is complete, the sequences and ﬂow diagrams will be proposed as appendices to Guideline 13 via the addenda process. This will allow them to be publicly reviewed. Including the sequences in Guideline 13 will also allow them to be maintained over time, such as ﬁxing bugs and incorporating new energy saving or diagnostic sequences via addenda, and also provides a good way for them to be disseminated − control sequences and control speciﬁcations go hand in hand.

1468-RP

Development of a Reference Building Information Model (BIM) for Thermal Model Compliance Testing

September 2009 – January 2012; Texas A&M University; Principal Investigator, Mark J. Clayton; TC 1.5, Computer Applications

1457-RP By-product Production from Photocatalytic Oxidation Associated with Indoor Air Cleaning Devices
September 2007 – September 2011; University of Wisconsin; Principal Investigator, Dean Tompkins & Marc Ramsey; TC 2.3, Gaseous Air Contaminants and Gas Contaminant Removal Equipment

Over the past 3-5 years, there is increasing commercial interest and available products that treat indoor air contaminants with technology that employs photocatalytic oxidation. Photocatalysis is becoming a widely used method for the puriﬁcation and deodorization of indoor air and industrial exhaust. The process is being incorporated into room air cleaners, in-duct cleaning devices, and in-vehicle ventilation cleaning devices. Photocatalysis typically uses titanium dioxide (TiO2 ) and an ultraviolet (UV) light source to drive the photocatalytic oxidation (PCO) reaction. Research has shown that photocatalysis oxidizes the pollutants introduced into a variety of breakdown products. Research has shown that simple volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) like ethylene are oxidized to carbon dioxide and water, but the fates of the more complex larger VOCs typically found in an indoor air environment are unknown. It is important to determine whether they are also reduced to non-threatening carbon dioxide and water, or whether they react to form irritating products like aldehydes which could deteriorate the indoor air rather than improve it. This research is precompetitive because it will expand the understanding of PCO technology and ensure that air cleaners based on this technology improve indoor air quality. The overall objective of the project is to establish a method for the analysis of byproducts from photocatalytic oxidation indoor air cleaning devices. In so doing, the investigators will characterize (measure and report) the by-product production from the photocatalytic oxidation associated with indoor air cleaning devices.

Although new computer technologies for representing buildings are expected to transform the processes for architectural engineering design services, a prerequisite for that transformation is the establishment of standards for data exchange among disparate software systems. Of particular interest to ASHRAE and ASHRAE members are the standards by which information provided by architects using Building information Modeling (BIM) software can be transferred automatically to energy analysis and simulation software. Achievement of such data exchange capability is expected to greatly increase the efﬁciency and accuracy of energy analysis and enable building designs to achieve higher levels of energy efﬁciency. Because of increasing awareness of impacts of environmental degradation, energy efﬁciency standards and air pollutant regulations are being made more stringent, which in turn increases interest in more efﬁcient and effective design processes for building energy systems. The objective of the proposed research is to establish reference models of buildings using multiple Building Information Modeling software systems that represent the information needed to perform automated energy simulation and analysis. The project includes a review of prior work, identiﬁcation of building features and their relative impact upon energy performance, development of accurate energy models of the reference buildings, and well-deﬁned inputs and outputs to BIM and energy simulation from the reference models. This will allow independent software developers to validate their software processes against an ASHRAE reference model.

1469-RP

Thermal Comfort in Commercial Kitchens

September 2009 – January 2012 (P); KEMA, Inc.; Principal Investigator, John Stoops; TC 5.10, Kitchen Ventilation

The restaurant industry is the largest employer outside of the government and employs over 12.2 million people in the United States (National Restaurant Association, 2005). Understanding the current state of thermal comfort in commercial kitchens is paramount to understanding and providing a controlled and comfortable environment for the kitchen worker. The results of this research will have immediate usefulness to engineers and kitchen consultants involved in the design of HVAC systems and operation of restaurants and institutional kitchens. The information will make possible a more accurate determination of kitchen worker comfort and how it is affected by heat loads.

1466-RP Development of a Calibration Reference Device for Use with Test Standard ANSI/ASHRAE 52.2-2007
April 2008 – January 2012 (P); University of Minnesota; Principal Investigator, Thomas Kuehn; TC 2.4, Particulate Air Contaminants and Particulate Air Contaminant Removal Equipment; AHRTI $10,000 co-funder

1472-RP

Experimental Validation of Modeling Tools for Mixed Gas Refrigeration Cycles

September 2007 – January 2012 (P); University of Wisconsin-Madison; Principal Investigator, Gregory Nellis & Sanford Klein; TC 10.1, Custom Engineered Refrigeration Systems

An earlier ASHRAE-supported study, RP-1088, found discrepancies between test facilities established to perform ﬁlter testing in accordance with ASHRAE Standard 52.2. Different MERV ratings were assigned to the same ﬁlters by different test facilities in a round robin test. Thus there is a need to provide some sort of inter-laboratory calibration so that each facility provides the same ﬁlter rating as any other facility when testing the same ﬁlter. The objective of this project is to develop at least one primary calibrated reference device that would allow laboratories that test particulate air ﬁlters in accordance with

Refrigeration cycles involving a multi-component, multi-phase working ﬂuid have become increasingly important for a number of cryogenic applications; perhaps the most signiﬁcant of these are cryosurgical systems and the production of liqueﬁed natural gas (LNG). This project seeks to verify the optimization algorithm, which was developed under completed ASHRAE research RP-1246. The design and optimization algorithm developed in RP-1246 will be applied to the speciﬁc heat transfer surface and operating conditions that are relevant to cryosurgical probes and used to predict the performance of a commercially available cryosurgical system. A series of parametric performance tests on this equipment will provide

October 2011

ASHRAE Journal

67
ASHRAE Journal - October 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ASHRAE Journal - October 2011
