Technology options for humidity control for hotels in Southeastern China Climate Dr. J.L.

Niu Department of Building Services engineering FCLU, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China Fax: (852) 2774 6146 E-mail: Bejlniu@polyu.edu.hk Abstract Hotels located in hot and humid climate frequently suffer from serious molds growth problems, and therefore substantial financial losses may occur due to vacancies. In this paper, the inherent loose RH control of conventional air-conditioning system design is numerically investigated using annual energy simulation programs DOE2.1E and DesiCalcTM. Two technology design options, which include wrap-around heat pipes, and desiccant-outdoor air dehumidification, are simulated. Although simple re-heat design is not allowed as it stands in energy conservation codes in many countries, the annual energy consumption of such a system is also simulated for comparison purposes. It becomes apparent that desiccant-enhanced air-conditioning systems can realize a close RH humidity control with additional energy use for regenerating the desiccant unit, while it helps reduce the peak electric demand and annual electricity consumption. If heat required for the reactivation of the desiccant comes from a fuel-fired boiler, the total annual primary energy use will be increased marginally by 5 to 7.5%, depending on equipment efficiencies. It is obvious that, when other low grade heat sources are available, desiccant enhanced air conditioning system is an energy efficient option and offers close RH control for hotels. It is up to the hotel industry to quantify their utilization losses due to moisture problems, and a further investigation of the cost, and space and maintenance requirements of the desiccant products available in the market may be warranted. Key words: Relative humidity, molds growth, primary energy consumption, Hotel Introduction Hotels in hot humid climates rely intensively on air-conditioning to provide thermal comfort for tourists. Yet the indoor environment is still subject to potential pollution, and one obvious indoor air pollution problem is molds growth. Being aware of the potential complaints from their guests, reputed hotels will choose to close these guestrooms or a whole floor to remove the molds and remodel interior finishing. Therefore, double financial losses will occur. Molds growth in hotels occurs most likely at several locations. In particular, according to the author's practical experiences, molds are found more often on duct liners and on wall/ceiling interior surfaces close to the supply air outlet. While materials and other environmental factors may contribute to the molds growth [1,2,3], excessive moisture or high relative humidity associated with air-conditioning system operation is believed to be the key factor.
This paper was published in HKIE Transactions, Vol 8. No2, pp20-24, 2001

Chilled Water Cooling Coil Exhaust Fan EA From Other Spaces HC CC Exhaust Supply Air Air Return Air Primary Air Unit OA Make -up Air To Other Spaces Make-up Air

Fan Coil Unit

Guestroom

Corridor

Figure 1. Case I and II: Central system + cooling coil systems (Reheating in the fan coil unit is activated in Case II for humidity control) In a typical air conditioning design for hotels, outdoor air is pretreated in a primary air-handling unit (PAU), typically to a temperature around 20C, and therefore is only partially dehumidified. It should be noted that, in hot and humid days, this pretreated air is almost 100% saturated and subsequently flows a long way through the air duct. It will be illustrated later that this pretreated air condition is crucial to the relative humidity level in hotel rooms. When ducted into the individual guestrooms, this air is mixed with recirculated room air and further cooled- and dehumidified in a room fancoil unit (FCU). The schematic for such typical designs is illustrated in Figure 1. Typically, a fan-coil unit can be controlled by the occupants, chilled-water supply to the cooling coiled are cycled on and off by a room thermostat [4]. Even in hotels where fan-coils are of the so-called four-pipe design, which means frequent switch between chilled-water and hot-water supply is possible, the heating function would be seldom actuated in the summer season. This design is typical, and it is well documented that humidity excesses may occur in the summer and transitional seasons [5] [6]. However, the severity is not usually assessed as standard practices. In our recent study, using computer simulation techniques, we numerically simulated the annual relative humidity control results with several possible air-conditioning system configurations. We used a public domain simulation program based upon widely validated models, and we adopted parameters that represent 'off-the-shelf' product/equipment performances. In other words, we emphasize on the effects of system integration rather than on superior equipment efficiencies in this study. With the hypothesis that high indoor relative humidity can occur in long hours, we first simulated the most common design as described above. Then two technological options, which have been developed over the years, were simulated. These options include wrap around heat -pipes, and desiccant outdoor air dehumidification [7] Although simple re-heating is not permitted in many national building energy codes, the annual energy consumption and RH control was also included in this study for comparison purposes. In this paper, the assumptions of the simulations and simulation
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results on the system performances in terms of annual energy use and RH control are reported. Methods Theoretically, building thermal and moisture behaviors can be numerically modeled using finite element or finite-difference method. But this does not work practically due the large physical size of a whole building and the complicated interaction with the heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. Over the last 30 years or so, building energy simulation methods have been much developed, which can be viewed as a reconciliation between the completeness of finite difference methods and the practicality of system modeling methods so that the building and HVAC system thermal and energy characteristics can be simulated with reasonably rigorous details. For the fundamental models and equations, readers are referred to the ASHRAE handbook series [8] for updated state-of-the art and a textbook by Kimura [9] for the more fundamental physical models. Here only the essential frameworks of the methods are briefed. Typically, a room space is considered as one nodal point, while the transient heat conduction through a solid wall is treated in one-dimensional manner, either by finite difference method, or the Z-transfer function method. In view of the fact that some heat gains are stored in the building thermal masses which include the massive floors and walls and furniture, certain methods are used to convert the heat gains into the so called cooling load, i.e., heat that has to be removed from a building space by a cold air flow to maintain the room air temperature at the desired value for thermal comfort purposes. Two fundamentally different methods exist in converting the heat gains from occupants, lighting and electrical/electronic equipment, and direct solar heat gain through fenestration. One method is the heat gain weighting factor method, and the other is the more fundamental room energy balance method [8, 10]. The former method is more empirical but is more widely supported by real building experimental data. The latter method involves the explicit use of surface convective heat transfer coefficients which tend to be variable and therefore uncertain all the time in a room, and also requires the explicit splitting of heat gains into convective and radiative heat, which are not always available for many office equipments. However, the room energy balance method has the potential advantage of addressing radiant cooling effects more directly [10]. The current stateof-the art is that a number of special computer codes for building energy simulation purposes are available either in the public domain or as commercial packages or well documented computer programs in some research institutes. A non-exhaustive list of such programs may include DOE-2, BLAST, ESP-r, HTB2, and ACCURACY, etc. [11,12, 13], and interested readers are referred to an exhaustive recent review by Hong et al [14]. This simulation study is performed using a commercially available program DesiCalcTM [15] which is based upon DOE-2.1E for the simulation of most of the processes with special models added for desiccant dehumidification simulation studies. In the original program DesiCalc, building envelope information are prefixed, and only US weather data are included, so that details of a specific project cannot be simulated. However, at our special request, Hong Kong weather data in typical meteorological year (TMY) format was implemented into the program [16], and this makes the present investigations possible. The study basically involves a four-step calculation in nature: a). Calculation of peak cooling load, and sizing the equipment accordingly, b). Calculation of building cooling loads hour by hour, c). Calculation of

energy requirement in cooling, dehumidification, and heating processes at the specified system configurations and comfort control strategies, and d). Calculation of primary energy consumption at pre-specified equipment energy efficiencies. At Step c), indoor air RH is also predicted by calculating the psychrometric processes involved with different control strategies. The moisture balance equation for a room is expressed as: dw & & (1) V a , r r = vs a , s ( wr ws ) + achi V a , o ( wO wr ) + ms dt & where, V is the room volume; vs is the supply air flow rate; a,r, a,s, and a,o are the air densities of the room air, supply air, and external air respectively; wr and ws are & respectively the moisture contents of the room air and supply air; ms is the preassumed moisture generation rate of occupants; and achi is the pre-assumed air change rate due to infiltration through envelopes. In this simulation, the indoor surface and furniture adsorption and de-sorption effects are not included. In reality, such effects may help smooth the RH fluctuations, but will not significantly affect the hourly averages. The differences of the different system designs are reflected by the different ws at partial load conditions, which is the focus of this investigation. In the actual calculations, the differential terms are discretized using one hour time step and implicit scheme.

In this simulation study, we consider a six-story hotel building with lobby and meeting room on first floor, guestrooms on upper floors. 70% of the total floor is guestrooms. Glazing percentage is 40 % wall glazing. Humidity control air treatment applies to 21000 m2 of guestrooms. Internal loads and ventilation values apply to humidity controlled areas. Occupancy density is 10 m2/person; lights load is 23 W/m2; other cooling load is 2.3 W/m2; outside air is 30 L/s per guest room, and infiltration rate is assumed to be 0.3 ach. Occupancy schedule is assumed to be 90% weekdays and 70% weekends during the night, and varies from 70% to 20% during the day hours. Hong Kong weather data are used to represent hot, humid climate conditions in southeastern Chinese cities like Guang Zhou and Shen Zhen. The summer conditions are: 1% design dry bulb/mean-coincident wet Bulb = 32.7/26.1 C, humidity ratio of 18.9 g/kg dry air; and 1% design dew-point/mean-coincident dry bulb = 26.1 / 29.4 C), and the humidity ratio is 21.7 g/kg dry air. For the indoor conditions, it assumed that room temperature is maintained at 24 C for cooling and 20C for heating. The humidity control depends on the system configurations to simulate the reality. Four cases representing four air-conditioning system design options are investigated: 1. Case I: This is the baseline case representing typical air-conditioning system design for hotels - a constant air-volume chilled water system with COP of 3.2 (or 1.1 kW/ton) electric chiller (air cooled) without economizer. System does not use relief air heat recovery. The air-conditioning system configuration assumes four-pipe fan-coils in guestrooms, with chilled-water makeup air unit. System is equipped with fossil fuel-fired boiler for heating and humidifier. However, no re-heating is employed for humidity control (Figure 1). The air handling processes are illustrated as Figure 2 a). When the chilled water flow rate to the cooling coils are regulated in response to a thermostat signal, the humidity ws of the supply air will be varied dependently, and this will cause room humidity fluctuations.

2. Case II: Baseline case with re-heating activated when necessary to control room humidity below 65%. (Figure 1). The psychrometric processes are different from Case I in that a hypothetical humidistat is in action to control the supply air humidity while supply air temperature is regulated by activating the reheating coil. As a result, both room humidity can be closely controlled below the specified 65% level. 3. Case III: A wrap around heat-pipe is used in conjunction with the baseline make-up air cooling-coil. In this combination, humidity control is still passive, but overall, greater dehumidification is achieved. The upstream coil pre-cools air entering the cooling coil and the down stream coil reheats the air leaving air. (Figure 3). 4. Case IV: In this case, desiccant dehumidification unit is added into the Baseline Case before the cooling coil in the make-up air unit. (Figure 4). The desiccant system utilizes a desiccant wheel to treat the outside air stream. The desiccant wheel removes moisture from the outdoor air, producing hot and dry air. The excess sensible heat is rejected using a sensible heat exchanger, shown here as a run-around heat recovery loop. In this application, the sensible heat exchange is with the relief air (Figure 4). The air handling processes involved are illustrated in Figure 2 b). Again, the humidity can be controlled closely below the specified upper limit, i.e., 65% level. Alternative using outdoor air in replace of the relief air is also investigated. Built into the program DesiCalc, is an empirical model that is representative of state-of-theart silica wheels [17], and the performances of the simulated wheel is given in Table 1. The sensible heat exchanger performance (effectiveness) is based on manufacturers data with typical effectiveness averaging 70%. Increased fan energy uses are also calculated. For all the cases, when calculating annual energy consumption in primary energy, the assumption is that heating required comes from a fossil fuel-fired boiler of 80% efficiency, and that electricity generation efficiency is 33%. Also, 20 % over-sizing in equipment is assumed. To examine the sensitivity to the assumed energy conversion efficiencies, Case I and IV were also re-run on water-cooled chillers with a COP of 5.2 (or 0.68 kW/ton). Also, desiccant enhanced system without the heat recovery exchanger was also simulated, in view of the fact such system configurations have been found in some applications in Hong Kong, such as in the Hong Kong Convention Centre and the Hong Kong Public Record Building. Table 1. Desiccant wheel matrix performance specification at ARI standard 940 conditions [17] Process and regeneration air inlet Performance indices (Process air flow face conditions velocity is 2.54 m/s) DB (C) 35 26.7 WB (C) 23.9 23.9 Humidity (g/kg dry air) 14.3 17.8 Moisture removed (kg/hr) 346 609 Specific energy input (kJ/kg removed moisture) 4161 4054

w [g/kg]

OA
60 50 40p S 8 10 12 14 16 18 t [oC] 1.0 0.8 0.6

/ kJ

] kg

PA M R

0.4

30 20 10 0.0

0.2

a)
w [g/kg]

OA
60 50 8 10 12 14 16 18 t [oC] 2 4 10 20 30 0.0
6

1.0 0.8

0.6

g] J/k 40 [k

R M S Sp

0.4

30 20 10 0.0

PA 0.2

b) Figure 2. Comparison of air handling processes: a). baseline system; b). desiccantenhanced air-conditioning system. (OA = outdoor air, R = room/return air; S = supply air, Sp =
potential supply air at part-load, M = mixture of outdoor and return air, PA = primary air after PAU)

2 -10 10 20 30 0.0

-10

Cooling Coil Outdoor Air

Supply Fan Supply to Space

Wrap-Around Heat Pipe

Figure 3. Case III: Wrap-around heat pipe is added to the OA cooling coil to increase the level of dehumidification.

Relief Air to Outdoors Exhaust Fan To Outdoors Regeneration Heater Exhaust from Guestroo Cooling Coil Supply Fan Outdoor Air (Ventilation Air) Desiccant Wheel Sensible Heat Recovery Supply to Space

Figure 4. Case IV: Desiccant dehumidifier and sensible heat recovery added (Platetype air to air sensible heat exchanger is simulated in the present study)

Results and Discussions

The simulated annual RH hours, annual energy consumption in primary energy forms, and monthly electric demand are illustrated in Figure 5, 6 and 7 respectively. The following can be observed: 1. In hot humid climates, the common design, i.e., central outdoor air system in combination with guest room coils does not closely control indoor air relative humidity (Figure 5). There are around 5,180 hours during which RH exceeds 70%. In other words, humidity excess occurs in 59% of annual hours in a typical year. Under these high RH conditions, air-duct liners and room interior surfaces are prone to molds/mildew growth; 2. Using simple re-heating downstream in a fan-coil can obviously control RH very closely. In this simulation, it is demonstrated that, when RH is controlled below 65% (Figure 5), the electricity consumption for the air-cooled chiller increases by 13.6% (Figure 6), the maximum monthly electric demand by 13.2% (Figure 7), and the heating energy by 44.8%, and total system annual energy use by 16.4 % in terms of primary energy. This design and operation mode is actually banned in the current government regulations [18]; 3. The low cost technology, wrap-around heat pipe, when applied in the outdoor unit, helps reduce high RH hours in a year. High humidity hours of RH>80% are reduced from 4,140 to 2,800 hours (Figure 5). However, the total hours exceeding 70% are still too long - around 57% of the annual hours. The actual impact on molds growth control can be expected to be insignificant. The addition of the equipment can increase the electricity consumption by 3% (Figure 6); 4. When a desiccant dehumidifier unit is added into the outdoor air unit, RH can be controlled below the specified upper limit, and in our study this upper limit is set to be 65% (Figure 5). In comparison to the baseline system, both peak electricity demand and annual electricity consumption for the chiller are reduced, respectively by 8% and 4.1 % (Figure 6 and 7). In the foreseeable future, when electricity demand charge is introduced, potential electricity bill reductions can be generated. For the reactivation of the desiccant wheel, an additional amount of heat is required. When assuming 80% efficiency for fuel-fired boiler, and COP of 3.2 for the air-cooled-chiller, and power station efficiency of 33 %, the annual energy consumption is increased by 5.3 % (Figure 6). Obviously, the system is superior to conventional re-heating system. When outdoor air is used for the heat recovery and reactivation of the desiccant wheel, energy consumption is slightly further increased by 7.7% in comparison to the baseline case. Regarding to the sensitivity of the simulation results to the assumed chiller efficiency, it was found that, when chiller COP was raised from 3.2 to 5.2, demand reduction became 2.3%, and annual primary energy consumption increase became 7.8% (Figure 6). Therefore, it can be concluded that desiccant enhanced system appears very promising in providing good humidity control with only marginally increased annual energy use, but with significant reductions in electricity-peak-demand. Just in the recent three years, some desiccant enhanced air-conditioning systems are applied in Hong Kong. However, in these local applications like the Hong Kong Public Record Building and The Hong Kong Convention Centre, the heat recovery

unit has typically not been included. In this series of simulation, we estimated the consequences on the annual energy consumption of this option. As depicted in Figure 6, the electricity consumption of this system configuration is increased by 3.6%, heating by 150%, and the total by 16.8%, which is no better than the conventional simple reheating system. These figures demonstrate that the heat recovery unit as illustrated in Figure 4 is essential in a desiccant enhanced system to achieve good energy performances.

7000
Hours per year

6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 0-9

Case I: Baseline Case Case II: Simple Reheat Case III: Wrap-around heat pipe Case IV: Desiccant-enhanced

10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90-100 Relative Humidity(%)

Figure 5. Annual hours at specific relative humidity ranges (Note: range 60-69% means 60-65% for Case II and Case IV)
Electricity 100,000 90,000 Annual primary energy consumption (bJ) 80,000 70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0 Case I: Baseline case with chiller COP =3.2 Case I: Case II: Simple Case III: WrapCase IV: Baseline case reheat around heat Desiccant with chiller pipe enhanced with COP = 5.2 relief air for regeneration System design options Case IV with chiller COP = 5.2 Case IV with outiside air for regeneration Case IV w/o heat recovery Heat

Figure 6. Comparison of annual energy consumption with different system designs (Note: Energy uses included lights, equipment, and domestic hot water)

Case I: Baseline Case Case III: Wrap-around heat pipe

Case II: Simple Reheat Case IV: Desiccant-enhanced

Monthly electric demand (kW)

2000 1500 1000 500 0 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Months Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Figure 7. Comparison of monthly electric demand at the four design options

Conclusions

Based upon this system simulation study, poor humidity control is one of the inherent characteristics of current PAU + FCU design. Desiccant-enhanced air-conditioning system offers the best humidity control, with marginally increased total energy consumption but certainly reduced electric demand. The percentage of the increased annual energy use is 5.3% to 7.8% within practical chiller COP range from 3.2 to 5.2. Also, the desiccant enhanced system reduces monthly peak demand up to 5.5 %. Another factor that has not been taken into account in this simulation study is the energy consumption due to over-cooling associated humidity excesses. According to the recent research by Fang et al [19], people perceive low enthalpy air as being of better quality. Therefore, when the RH is high, occupants will have the natural tendency to lower the temperature to compensate the high RH so that lower enthalpy may be achieved. The increased energy use associated with this over-cooling was not simulated since a constant set point identical in all the simulation cases was used. Taking all these uncertainties into account, it can be concluded that desiccant enhanced system may be justified for the application in hotels to offer required humidity control. Especially, it is shown that outdoor heat recovery can offer compatible energy performances in comparison with exhaust air heat recovery. The former option does not need the return air duct run, and therefore can be practically realized in Hong Kong. Furthermore, the required heat for the desiccant regeneration can be other low-grade heat available. Especially, it offers the possibility to use heat from co-generation systems. In this case, the desiccant enhanced system will be an obvious option that is superior to the current designs in both indoor air quality and system energy efficiencies. Also, it should be emphasized that the sensible heat recovery unit is
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essential for a better energy efficiency in the desiccant enhanced system. It will be significant for the hotel industry to quantify the utilization losses due to poor humidity control in its operation, and further assess the economy returns a potential retrofit can offer over the system life cycle. These should warrantee a more exhaustive survey of desiccant products available in the market, regarding their cost, space requirement, and operation and maintenance requirement so that a sound life cycle analysis can be performed for a particular city.
Acknowledgement This research is financially supported by the RGC earmarked research grant of the Hong Kong SAR government. Nomenclatures

& = the pre-assumed moisture generation rate of occupants ms & vs = the supply air flow rate achi = air change rate due to infiltration COP = Coefficient of Performance = refrigeration capacity / power input DB = Dry-bulb temperature (C) FCU = Fan-coil unit PAU = Primary air handling unit RH = Relative humidity (%) V = the room volume WB = Wet-bulb temperature (C) wr and ws = respectively the moisture contents of the room air and supply air a,r, a,s, and a,o = the air densities of the room air, supply air, and external air respectively
References

[1] Arens, E, A and Baughman, A.V. Indoor humidity and human health: Part II buildings and their systems, ASHRAE Transaction 1996, Vol.102, pp. 212-221 [2] Baughman, A.V, and Arens, E, A Indoor humidity and human health: Part I Literature review of health effects of humidity-influenced indoor pollutants, ASHRAE Transaction 1996, Vol.102, pp. 93-211 [3] Taylor, S.T. Duct liner: an engineer's perspective, IAQ Applications, 2000, Vol.1, No. 1, pp.19-20 [4] ASHRAE Handbook 1999, HVAC applications, Chapter 5. Hotels, Motels, and Dormitories [5] ASHRAE Handbook 1996, Systems and Equipment, Chapter 4. All water systems [6] Lu, Y.Q., HVAC Design Guide, The Press of Chinese Construction, Beijing, 1996 [7] Busweiler, U Air-conditioning with a combination of radiant cooling, displacement ventilation and desiccant cooling, ASHRAE Transactions 1993, Vol.99 (2). pp.503 -509 [8] ASHRAE Handbooks Fundamentals, Chapter 25 30 Load and Energy Calculations, ASHRAE, 1997

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[9] Kimura K., Scientific basis of air-conditioning, Applied Science Publishers Ltd., London, 1977 [10] Niu, J.L., and Burnett, J., Integrating radiant/operative temperature controls into building energy simulation programs, ASHRAE Transactions, Vol.104, Part 2, pp201-207, 1998 [11] Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, DOE-2 Engineers Manual, Version 2.1A, Editors D.A. York and C.C. Cappiello, Nov. 1982 [12] Alexander, D.K., HTB2 a model for the thermal environment of building in operation, Releas, 1996 [13] Niu, J.L., Fundamentals of ACCURACY version 2.0, Report No. K-177, Lab. Koudetechniek en Klimaatregeling,Version 2, Users manual, Delft University of technology, Delft, The Netherlands, Aug.1994 [14] Hong, T., S.K. Chou, and T.Y. Bong, Building simulation: an overview of developments and information sources, Building and Environment, Vol.35, No.4, pp.347-361, 2000 [15] InterEnergy Software, DesiCalc Mannual 1.1g, 1998 [16] Witte, M. Private communication. Feb. 2000 [17] ARI Standard 940 - Standard for desiccant dehumidification components, 1998 [18] EMSD, Code of practice of energy efficiency of air-conditioning installations, Electrical and Mechanical Services Department, The Government of the Hong Kong SAR, 1998 [19] Fang.L., Clausen, G. and Fanger, P.O Impact of temperature and humidity on the perception of indoor air quality, Indoor air, 1998, Vol.8, No. 2, pp.80 - 90.

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