Search Results (3)

According to extant Italian legislation implementing the Renewable Energy Directive, the mandatory renewable quota for a new building is 60% referring to a single service (e.g., heating during winter) or to multiple services (e.g., heating during winter and air conditioning during summer), depending on which services are actually present. The obligation to satisfy this minimum value often leads heating and ventilation plant designers to provide heat pump systems in industrial buildings, typically air/water or direct expansion type coupled with air terminals (air heaters or ventilation units) or radiant floors. The question is: Is this always the most advantageous option for industrial buildings? A typical industrial building was modeled by Trnsys^® in two different climates. Based on the calculated thermal heating loads, the condensing radiant tubes and heat pump coupled with the air heaters systems were analyzed through dynamic simulation, evaluating their performance from an energy, environmental impact, and economic point of view. The analysis carried out revealed that a heat pump system is not always the most advantageous solution depending on the climate, the characteristics of the building (less or more thermal insulation, which corresponds to existing buildings rather than new ones), and the size of the photovoltaics system eventually installed on the roof. Full article

The zero-energy building (ZEB) concept has a high potential for securing energy savings in the building sector. To achieve ZEB, various active systems, including renewable systems such as photovoltaic, solar heating, and geothermal systems, have been developed. However, the existing systems are costly or not optimized. To overcome these issues, the authors previously developed an integrated tri-generation system. In this research, the previously developed system was comprehensively analyzed considering the indoor thermal comfort and energy efficiency to develop a design and operation method for the integrated system. Two different heating systems (convective heating and radiant floor heating) were employed in the tri-generation system, and their system performance, predicted mean vote (PMV), and predicted percentage of dissatisfied (PPD) were compared using simulations. The results showed that the heating coefficient of power of the radiant floor heating system was 18.8% higher than that of the convective heating system. Moreover, the radiant floor heating system (Case 4) met the PMV and PPD standards during all the heating periods. Overall, radiant floor heating was found to be more efficient than convective heating. The results confirm that radiant floor heating is more suitable than convective heating considering the indoor thermal comfort of occupants. Full article

With the development of renewable energy, energy substitution technology has been applied to many fields. This research suggests that solar energy, as renewable energy, takes the place of conventional energy: a floor radiant heating system driven by solar energy is combined with a photovoltaic floor radiant heating system, and the photothermal floor radiant heating system has been proposed and investigated in this study. This research also designs a fuzzy PID (Proportion, Integration, Differentiation) control system to control the indoor temperature within the set range precisely. In this paper, the proposed floor radiant heating system has been tested and analyzed. The experimental results show that the inhomogeneity of the indoor floor surface temperature distribution is larger than that of other places, and the standard deviation of the indoor floor surface temperature can reach 1.87 °C. The standard deviation was approximately 0.36 °C at 0.6 m, 1.2 m and 1.8 m, which indicates this is suitable for habitation. Three kinds of floor radiant heating systems were compared and analyzed to demonstrate the advantage of the proposed floor radiant heating system. The calculation method of the heating system was proposed and applied to the actual heating system in this paper. The proposed floor radiant heating system is a highly efficient and environmental protection system that can be used for heating extensive areas to realize the objective of energy saving and emission reduction. Full article