Impacts of static pressure set level on HVAC energy consumption and indoor conditions

Conference · Wed Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1997

OSTI ID:349958

Liu, M; Zhu, Y; Claridge, D E ^[1]; White, E ^[2]

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1. Texas A and M Univ., College Station, TX (United States). Energy Systems Lab.
2. UTMB, Galveston, TX (United States). Energy Management Operation

Air static pressure must be maintained at a certain level leaving the air-handling unit (AHU) to force a suitable amount of air through the terminal boxes. However, an excessive static pressure level is often used due to (1) lack of a control device in a constant-volume (CV) system, (2) a malfunctioning control device in a variable-air-volume (VAV) system, and (3) fear of failure to maintain room temperature. High static pressure often develops excessive damper leakage in older mixing boxes. This results in an appropriate mixing of hot and cold air for dual-duct systems, excessive reheat in single-duct systems, and an excessive amount of air entering the space. Consequently, the actual fan power and heating and cooling energy consumption all become significantly higher than the design values. Even worse, the system may not be able to maintain room conditions due to unwanted simultaneous heating and cooling and may be noisy due to the excessive static pressure. This paper proposed to control the hot duct pressure and the variable-frequency drives (VFDs) to control the fan static, i.e., the cold duct pressure for dual-duct air-handling units. Both a theoretical analysis and results from a case study are presented in this paper.

• OSTI ID: 349958
• Report Number(s): CONF-970668--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
ENERGY CONSUMPTION
PRESSURIZATION
SPACE HVAC SYSTEMS
THERMAL COMFORT