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Title: A novel Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) heat recovery system model: Development and validation

Abstract

As one of the latest emerging HVAC technologies, the Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) system with heat recovery (HR) configurations has obtained extensive attention from both the academia and industry. Compared with the conventional VRF systems with heat pump (HP) configurations, VRF-HR is capable of recovering heat from cooling zones to heating zones and providing simultaneous cooling and heating operations. Moreover, this could lead to substantial energy saving potential and more flexible zonal control. In this paper, a novel model is developed to simulate the energy performance of VRF-HR systems. It adheres to a more physics-based development with the ability to simulate the refrigerant loop performance and consider the dynamics of more operational parameters, which is crucial for representing more advanced control logics. Another key feature of the model is the introduction of component-level curves for indoor units and outdoor units instead of overall performance curves for the entire system, and thus it requires much fewer user-specified performance curves as model inputs. The validation study reflects good agreements between the simulated energy use from the new VRF-HR model and the laboratory measurement data across all operational modes at sub-hourly time steps. The model has been adopted in the official release ofmore » the EnergyPlus simulation program since Version 8.6, which enables more accurate and robust assessments of VRF-HR systems to support their applications in energy retrofit of existing buildings or design of zero-net-energy buildings.« less

Authors:
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [3]
+ Show Author Affiliations
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Daikin Industries LTD, Osaka (Japan)
  3. Daikin US Corporation, New York, NY (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
OSTI Identifier:
1532320
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1496313
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Energy and Buildings
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 168; Journal Issue: C; Journal ID: ISSN 0378-7788
Publisher:
Elsevier
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION; Variable Refrigerant Flow; Heat recovery; Energy modeling; Validation; Building performance simulation; Controls

Citation Formats

Zhang, Rongpeng, Sun, Kaiyu, Hong, Tianzhen, Yura, Yoshinori, and Hinokuma, Ryohei. A novel Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) heat recovery system model: Development and validation. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.03.028.
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Zhang, Rongpeng, Sun, Kaiyu, Hong, Tianzhen, Yura, Yoshinori, & Hinokuma, Ryohei. A novel Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) heat recovery system model: Development and validation. United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.03.028
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Zhang, Rongpeng, Sun, Kaiyu, Hong, Tianzhen, Yura, Yoshinori, and Hinokuma, Ryohei. Tue . "A novel Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) heat recovery system model: Development and validation". United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.03.028. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1532320.
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@article{osti_1532320,
title = {A novel Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) heat recovery system model: Development and validation},
author = {Zhang, Rongpeng and Sun, Kaiyu and Hong, Tianzhen and Yura, Yoshinori and Hinokuma, Ryohei},
abstractNote = {As one of the latest emerging HVAC technologies, the Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) system with heat recovery (HR) configurations has obtained extensive attention from both the academia and industry. Compared with the conventional VRF systems with heat pump (HP) configurations, VRF-HR is capable of recovering heat from cooling zones to heating zones and providing simultaneous cooling and heating operations. Moreover, this could lead to substantial energy saving potential and more flexible zonal control. In this paper, a novel model is developed to simulate the energy performance of VRF-HR systems. It adheres to a more physics-based development with the ability to simulate the refrigerant loop performance and consider the dynamics of more operational parameters, which is crucial for representing more advanced control logics. Another key feature of the model is the introduction of component-level curves for indoor units and outdoor units instead of overall performance curves for the entire system, and thus it requires much fewer user-specified performance curves as model inputs. The validation study reflects good agreements between the simulated energy use from the new VRF-HR model and the laboratory measurement data across all operational modes at sub-hourly time steps. The model has been adopted in the official release of the EnergyPlus simulation program since Version 8.6, which enables more accurate and robust assessments of VRF-HR systems to support their applications in energy retrofit of existing buildings or design of zero-net-energy buildings.},
doi = {10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.03.028},
journal = {Energy and Buildings},
number = C,
volume = 168,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Mar 20 00:00:00 EDT 2018},
month = {Tue Mar 20 00:00:00 EDT 2018}
}
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Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.03.028
Copyright Statement
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Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 19 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Figures / Tables:

Figure 1 Figure 1: Schematic chart of a 3-pipe VRF-HR system
All figures and tables (14 total)
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Works referenced in this record:

Thermal comfort and building energy consumption implications – A review
journal, February 2014

A review on buildings energy consumption information
journal, January 2008

Review of building energy-use performance benchmarking methodologies
journal, May 2011

Achieving better energy-efficient air conditioning – A review of technologies and strategies
journal, April 2013

Variable refrigerant flow systems: A review
journal, July 2010

Simulation comparison of VAV and VRF air conditioning systems in an existing building for the cooling season
journal, November 2009

Comparison of energy efficiency between variable refrigerant flow systems and ground source heat pump systems
journal, May 2010

Development and validation of a new variable refrigerant flow system model in EnergyPlus
journal, April 2016

Field performance measurements of a heat pump desiccant unit in dehumidification mode
journal, January 2008

Optimal control of combined air conditioning system with variable refrigerant flow and variable air volume for energy saving
journal, June 2014

Variable evaporating temperature control strategy for VRV system under part load conditions in cooling mode
journal, March 2015

EnergyPlus: creating a new-generation building energy simulation program
journal, April 2001

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      Figures / Tables found in this record:

      Figure 1 (p. 6)figure
      Figure 2 (p. 8)figure
      Figure 3 (p. 10)figure
      Figure 4 (p. 11)figure
      Figure 5 (p. 14)figure
      Figure 6 (p. 14)figure
      Figure 7 (p. 15)figure
      Figure 8 (p. 16)figure
      Figure 9 (p. 17)figure
      Figure 10 (p. 18)figure
      Figure 11 (p. 20)figure
      Figure 32 (p. 20)figure
      Figure 4 (p. 21)figure
      Table 1 (p. 21)table
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