Simulation of a non conventional HVAC plant in an experimental building devoted to artificial fog production.

In the frame of a european project dealing with the issue of transport safety improvement in
fog conditions, a new experimental building is being constructed on the FUL campus, in the
southern part of Belgium. This building hosts a climatic chamber in which a given indoor
climate is to be maintained (temperature and relative humidity) whatever the external climate.
Control of the internal climate will be performed by means of a specific HVAC plant. The
general environmental context of the project led to the selection of non conventional solutions
for the plant: solar collectors (both thermal and photovoltaic) are associated with a reversible
heat pump in order to either heat or cool the building. In some circumstances, simultaneous
heating and cooling of different rooms of the building will be necessary and possible. Energy
distribution within the building will be made possible by different systems:
- floor heating and/or cooling
- cooling or heating ceiling
- ventilation and Air handling Unit
The paper reports on the use of building and HVAC system simulation in order to support the
design of the plant. Simulation is carried out in the TRNSYS environment and gathers the
following components: building, reversible heat pump, thermal solar collectors, photovoltaic
solar collectors, floor heating, cooling ceiling, Air Handling Unit, storage tanks. Parameters
identification for the different components will be developed.
The paper will focus on specific problems connected to the simultaneous control of both
temperature and relative humidity in situation close to the saturation state.
The whole design methodology will be situated in the general context of the building life
cycle and will make use of some ideas presented in the IEA Annex 30 research project.