[en] In moderate climates, using natural ventilation systems could allow to save up to 60 % of the end energy for ventilation and air conditioning. Natural ventilation systems depend on pressure differences to move fresh air into buildings by wind effect and pressure effect. Night cooling can be achieved either by an increased air change rate. The higher air change rate can be realized by ventilators/ mechanical ventilation systems or by free convection. The main objective of this paper is to reduce the internal summer cooling load by increasing the natural cross ventilation between different zones in apartment buildings. The performance of natural ventilation is highly dependent on the external outdoor temperature. Over the last years, an increase in the outdoor temperature has been noticed and predicted to rise by the end of this century according to IPCC which puts into consideration the uncertainty of the climate. This paper investigates the performance of natural ventilation using building energy simulation tool ‘DesignBuilder” to simulate a multi-zone apartment building in Belgium. The indoor thermal comfort is enhanced by determining an optimum set of input parameters such as the setpoint temperatures, the discharge coefficient of the night ventilation, and the opening areas in the building. Those parameters are optimized using current and future weather data to evaluate the evolution of natural ventilation system performance and indoor thermal comfort. The results show that proper use of natural ventilation can significantly reduce the overheating risk during a typical year and that the benefits of natural ventilation are not expected to vanish with global warming. It can be seen that, without natural ventilation, thermal comfort could be reached on average 53.7% of the time, while it could reach 66.2% of the time using single-sided ventilation and 78.8% with cross ventilation. However, during heatwaves, natural ventilation becomes inefficient and cannot guarantee the thermal comfort of the occupants all the time as the thermal comfort of occupants can only be achieved 51% of the time during heatwaves.
Disciplines :
Energy
Author, co-author :
El Nagar, Essam ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'aérospatiale et mécanique > Systèmes énergétiques
Zeoli, Alanis ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'aérospatiale et mécanique > Systèmes énergétiques
Lemort, Vincent ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'aérospatiale et mécanique > Systèmes énergétiques
Language :
English
Title :
Performance Evaluation of Passive Cooling in a Multi-Zone Apartment Building Based on Natural Ventilation
Publication date :
24 May 2022
Event name :
CLIMA 2022: the 14th REHVA HVAC World Congress
Event organizer :
TVVL TU Delft TU Eindhoven REHVA
Event place :
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Event date :
22/05/2022 - 25/05/2022
By request :
Yes
Audience :
International
Main work title :
In Proceedings of CLIMA 2022: 14th REHVA HVAC World Congress
Publisher :
REHVA, Brussels, Belgium
Peer reviewed :
Peer reviewed
Development Goals :
4. Quality education 7. Affordable and clean energy 13. Climate action
This research was partially funded by the Walloon Region under the call ‘Actions de Recherche Concertées 2019 (ARC)’ and the project OCCuPANt, on the Impacts Of Climate Change on the indoor environmental and energy PerformAnce of buildiNgs in Belgium during summer. The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Walloon Region and Liege University for funding. This study is a part of the International Energy Agency Annex 80 project activities to define resilient cooling in residential buildings.