Volume 3: Innovative Solutions for Energy Transitions: Part II

A Study of Thermal Comfort on a Novel Radiant Heat Exchanger Based on Air-Conditioning Unit Tingting Jiang, Jing Wang, Shijun You, Huan Zhang, Lingfei Jiang, Suola Shao, Xingming Zhu, Yaran Wang

Abstract

Conventional air conditioner is considered as one of the most prevalent cooling systems over the recent decades. However, it has strong draught sensation and indoor noise. In order to avoid such drawbacks and improve the thermal comfort, a novel radiant heat exchanger based on air-conditioning unit is proposed. A series of experiments are conducted to investigate the thermal comfort of the cooling system. The results indicate that the predicted mean vote values are between -0.7 and 0.7, and the predicted percentage of dissatisfied values are less than 15%, which are all within the ranges recommended by ISO 7730 standard. The vertical temperature difference from 0.1 m to 1.1 m is approximately 1.5 oC, which is much lower than that of conventional air systems. Compared with conventional air systems, the radiant heat exchanger cooling system can improve the thermal comfort.

Keywords radiant heat exchanger, air-conditioning unit, thermal comfort, vertical temperature difference