ASHRAE Journal - October 2013 - 68

ReseaRch RepoRt

Ventilation rates shall be assessed;
2) Quantify the effect of aircraft type, maintenance, APU, engine age and operationsrelated parameters on cabin and bleed air quality; and
3) Investigate relationship of the measured cabin air contaminants, ventilation rates
and other factors with reported symptoms among passengers and flight crew.
1284-RP Develop a Standard for Testing and Stating the Efficiency of Industrial Pulse
Cleaned Dust Collectors
April 2006 – June 2014 (P); Blue Heaven Technologies, LLC; Principal Investigator,
Robert Burkhead; TC 5.4, Industrial Process Air Cleaning
Although ASHRAE Standard 52 and RP-671 deal with test methods for evaluation of
general ventilation air cleaners, their particulate loading rates are so low that they are
not practical to evaluate industrial air cleaning equipment. Further, these test methods
do not take into account the automatic cleaning methods that are usually in industrial
air cleaners to keep a steady pressure drop, yet the cleaning action can result in increased
emissions. As a result, there is a great need for a performance test procedure that addresses
the higher particulate loading, and the wide variety of particulate contaminant types to
permit measurement and reporting of the mass emissions and fractional collection of
efficiency of industrial air cleaning devices.
Incident-Response Monitoring Technologies for Aircraft Cabin Air
1306-RP Quality
April 2006 – January 2014 (P); TNO Environmental and Geosciences; Principal Investigator, JBGA Havermans; TC 9.3,
Transportation Air Conditioning

Research is needed to strengthen the role of a new ASHRAE Standard (ASHRAE 161)
that will address incidence response monitoring in aircraft. Standard developers need
to be certain that there is equipment available to support a newly developed standard
by means of measurement capabilities. The results of this research project will provide
a knowledge base on equipment availability and limitation. This research project is anticipated to result in demonstration of methods and technologies for characterization of
aircraft engine/APU systems contaminants in aircraft cabins during an incident occurrence. Use of these methodologies will generate data that can be correlated with passenger
and flight attendant complaints about air quality. Such data will also enable the aircraft
manufacturers, airline companies, and regulatory authorities to analyze the underlying
causes of air supply contamination in the aircraft cabin environment and ultimately
institute preventive design and operations measures.
Pressure Drop Determination for Two-Phase
1327-RP Flow Regime and Flow in Various Riser Sizes
Ammonia Upward
April 2007 – December 2014; Teknologisk Institut (DTI); Principal Investigator, Thomas Lund; TC 10.3, Refrigerant Piping; IIAR
$10,000 co-funder

This ASHRAE research project will have a significant worldwide energy impact and
an annual monetary savings that is far in excess of the project cost. The advancement to
the state of the art will be the publication in the ASHRAE handbooks a set of design curves
that will define the optimal suction riser velocity for a range of pipe diameters and temperatures. This information will be the only data of its type available in the public domain
at these pipe size ranges and with ammonia. It will be used by industrial refrigeration
system design engineers and plant operating engineers worldwide.
The objective of this research project is to determine the minimum vapor velocity
required to sustain vertical upward flow of liquid anhydrous ammonia when transported
by vapor anhydrous ammonia in the same pipe. This velocity shall be determined for a
range of pipe diameters, overfeed rates, and temperatures. The pressure drop per foot
of pipe as a function of velocity, temperature, and overfeed rate will also be determined.

undesirable misapplications. The objective of this project is to provide improved design
data and design tools for SWHP systems. The scope includes collection, interpretation,
and collation of design data; experimental measurement of convection coefficients on
submerged heat exchanges, and development of design tools.
Experimental
1397-RP Distribution Investigation of Hospital Operating Room (OR) Air
September 2008 – January 2014 (P); University of Colorado; Principal Investigator, John Zhai; TC 9.6, Healthcare Facilities

The proposed research will advance the state of the art in design of operating room
(OR) spaces; it may also promote advances in related fluid mechanics research areas. If a
protective thermal plume is maintained above the surgical site, the deposition of infectious
particles should be reduced. The conditions that sustain the thermal plume have been
predicted by earlier CFD simulations. The pertinent results will verify these predictions.
Otherwise, the results will define a somewhat different but experimentally verified range
of conditions. These results will have significant impact on practical OR design guidelines, but the impact will not be limited to this one, albeit important, direct application.
Other indirect advances will accrue from the proposed research. The detailed
experimental results will be used to refine and improve the CFD modeling of OR air
distribution, and the improved modeling techniques can be applied to air distribution
engineering elsewhere in health care, such as patient protection rooms and infection
isolation rooms, where similar unidirectional laminar flows are advisable. The improved
engineering tools should be broadly useful in health care and in similar application such
as industrial clean rooms.
Measurement, Modeling, Analysis and Reporting Protocols for Short1404-RP Term M&V of Whole Building Energy Performance
September 2009 – January 2014 (P); Milwaukee School of Engineering; Principal Investigator, Bass; Abushakra; TC 4.7,
Energy Calculations

The objective of this research is to develop a new method to determine the shortest
time period for energy use monitoring involving hourly (or sub-hourly) data that will
yield reliable and accurate long term energy use estimates within acceptable uncertainty
limits. By evaluating the uncertainty in the measured data as the monitoring period
progresses, the new method will allow users to evaluate the energy performance and
calculate energy savings in commercial and institutional buildings, in a cost-effective
short-term monitoring period instead of the current year-long monitoring stipulated in
most M&V protocols. The new approach would resolve the problem of needing long-term
monitored data, which is often very costly to obtain and/or historically unavailable. In
addition, this measurement/extrapolation approach should be designed as simply as
possible to meet the uncertainty targets in energy savings stipulated in M&V protocols
such as ASHRAE Guideline 14.

1408-RP

The Effect of Lining Length on the Insertion Loss of Acoustical Duct
Liner in Sheet Metal Ductwork

September 2008 – June 2014 (P); University of Nevada-Las Vegas; Principal Investigator, Doug Reynolds; TC 2.6, Sound and
Vibration Control

The incremental sound attenuation values (expressed in dB/ft and dB/m) for acoustically lined ductwork that are in the ASHRAE Applications Handbook are based on tests
conducted on a very small sample of duct sizes, and are misleading in that they permit the
assumption that the liner attenuation is linearly proportional to duct length. The proposed
research will help TC 2.6 modify the incremental attenuation values to show how they
depend on duct length so that air distribution system designers can minimize the use
of acoustical duct liner while achieving the necessary noise reduction that it provides.

1410-RP

Effect of System Chemicals toward the Breakdown of Lubricants and
Refrigerants

1383-RP Develop a Radiant System Module for the Simulation and Analysis of
Spaces and Systems

September 2011 – January 2014 (P); Spauschus Associates, Inc.; Principal Investigator, Ngoc Rohatgi; TC 3.2, Refrigeration
System Chemistry

April 2009 – January 2014 (P); Wrightsoft Corporation; Principal Investigator, Charles Barnaby; TC 6.5, Radiant Heating and
Cooling

The objectives of this research project are to conduct a literature search to identify
additional, more recent classes of fundamental chemicals that are likely to produce significant interactions with the HFC/POE systems and to recommend to the Project Monitoring
Committee (PMS) any proposed modification to the list of chemicals shown in Table 1. Any
deviation from the list must have written approval by the PMS. Experimentally determine
the stability of each chemical species shown in Table 1 with HFC/POE and metal coupons
in sealed glass tubes according to ASHRAE Standard 97-1999. The test matrix includes one
refrigerant (R-134a), one POE lubricant, the twenty chemical species, two concentrations
for each chemical species and two aging temperatures for each concentration. Suggest decomposition mechanisms, based on the identity of the decomposition products. The effects
of temperatures and initial process fluid concentrations on the decomposition products
will be determined. Compare the data from the tests with the chemical species to that
from the control samples (with no chemical) in order to identify which chemical species or
chemical classes are likely to cause contamination in the R-134a/POE refrigeration systems.

The proposed module will provide the basic algorithm and equations to accurately
model whole building radiant energy as it affects comfort, demand for HVAC, and energy
use. The module will be demonstrated by coding it as part of a publicly available building
energy simulation model (e.g., TRNSYS, DOE-2, and EnergyPlus).
Development
1385-RP (SWHP) of Design Tools for Surface Water Heat Pump Systems
September 2009 – January 2014 (P); Oklahoma State University; Principal Investigator, Jeffrey Spitler; TC 6.8, Geothermal
Heat Pump and Energy Recovery

Surface water heat pumps are a relatively inexpensive but highly efficient heating
and cooling alternative. In some applications, direct cooling or pre-cooling is possible
without refrigeration, even in moderate climates because of naturally-occurring thermal
stratification. However, little effort has been devoted to developing public domain design
tools. Although a great deal of information is available from geological surveys regarding
characteristics of surface water, HVAC engineers are unfamiliar with how to locate and
apply this information. Finally, overloading a reservoir or stream may result in extreme
temperature variations, water level fluctuations, SWHP system failures, and environmental problems. Designers need tools to optimize this important HVAC option and avoid

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1413-RP

Developing Standard Procedures for Filling Climatic Data Gaps for
Use in Building Performance Monitoring and Analysis

September 2011 – March 2014 (P); University of Oklahoma; Principal Investigator, Yang Hong; TC 4.2, Climatic Information

The objectives of this proposed effort are to develop standard procedures, in the
form of an ASHRAE Toolkit, for filling in missing measured climatic data and to verify
ASHRAE Journal - October 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ASHRAE Journal - October 2013
