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Commercial Buildings
Proma Chakraborty
Electrical and Electronics Enginneering
Manipal Institute of Technology
Manipal,Karnataka
Email: promachakraborty96@gmail.com
AbstractThe consumption of energy is rapidly growing glob- on energy per year on an average.[7]
ally leading to the depletion of energy resources and a negative More than 70% of the energy distribution of a commercial
environmental impact. Electricity and natural gas accounts for building belongs to HVAC systems which is heating and
about 93% of the total energy consumed in a building.Typically
nearly 70% of the total energy use of a building can be credited to cooling. The average efficiency of the any system depends on
space heating, water heating, lighting, and cooling all combined the thermal mass of the building. In most scenarios the rooms
[1]. The large consumption translates to a cost of more than are usually designed as empty. However the surface area of the
$30,600 per year [2]. Reducing the run time of the HVAC systems furniture and the material of the floor covering should have a
of a commercial building will enable cost and resource savings. noticeable effect. A study has shown that existence of furniture
This paper analyses how furniture design impacts the energy
consumption of a building. As furniture in a commercial building will reduce the performance of the floor heating by 30% [8].
occupies more than 50% of the volume of the room, a larger It also important to take into account the material of the floor
amount of energy is required to heat or cool the room due to the and the wall. Energy consumption increases with carpet floors
thermal mass of the material of the furniture.This paper focuses versus wooden or laminated floors. The insulation thickness
to bring out the difference in time taken to heat or cool a room of the wall needs to be taken into account for validation of
with and without furniture, thus highlighting the difference of
run time of the HVAC systems. The simulations conducted in the heating system and HVAC unit [9].
Energy2D [3] bring out the differences in run time by reducing Thus the cover material of the furniture and flooring are
the surface area of furniture. Thus bringing out a method of important factors that influence efficiency of the HVAC system
reducing energy consumption and running cost, resulting in lower [10].This paper will bring out the results of the importance of
damage to the environment. reduction of furniture surface area in a commercial building
Keywords: Energy Consumption, Commercial Building, to build an energy efficient system.
HVAC, Furniture Design
II. M ETHODOLOGY
I. I NTRODUCTION
In order to show the impact of furniture design on the energy
In North America up to the year 2012 the number of com- consumption of the building. A sample model of a room is
mercial buildings are around 5,557,000.The commercial sector taken and simulations are conducted in Energy2D.
alone consumes 1726 trillion Btu from electricity according to
Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS), A. Room Models
U.S. Energy Information Administration.The principal build- The room taken into account is considered to have a floor
ing activity is office, followed by warehouse and storage. space of 110 x 110 m with the height to be of 3 metres. The
The buildings were mostly constructed in the time period of dimensions of the room are according to the dimensions of an
1980 to 2000. The same study indicates that the majority average office building [11].The thickness of each wall is taken
source of this electricity is from natural gas[4]. There is a as 0.20 m.The walls are adjacent to each other. The dimensions
colossal capacity to reduce energy consumption in new and old are given according to the International Building Code,which
commercial buildings. Over 30% of the energy consumed in was developed by International Code Council. It is a detailed
commercial buildings is attenuated and this is according to the building code that establishes the minimum regulations for
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The large consumption building systems.This code is a crucial tool to preserve public
of energy is also the cause of more than 18% of the U.S carbon health and safety. It is to prevent the hazards associated with
dioxide emissions [5]. An average of over 17.3 kilowatt-hours the built environment. The International Building Code is used
(kWh) of electricity is used in office buildings in the U.S. [6]. in around 50 states in the US, the District of Columbia,New
Considering commercial energy costs as $0.10 per kWh and York City, Northern Marianas Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico and
$0.98 per hundred f t3 . The approximate cost of power (P) per the U.S. Virgin Islands.
f t2 for any office building is around $1.73 for electricity. For The room is well insulated the building standard is accord-
an average office building in the United States. (approximately ing to the IBC [12].Hence the walls are well insulated and
15,000 f t2 i.e 1395 m2 ), that equates to about $30,600 spent follow Type 2 construction [13].Type 2 construction is a kind
TABLE I 0.2 m between each cubicle The total surface area exposed of
T HERMAL P ROPERTIES OF L IGHTWEIGHT C ONCRETE . each furniture cubicle is calculated and considered to be the
area of the furniture. The carpet area is considered to be the
Thermal Conductivity Thermal Diffusivity Specific Heat Capacity
remaining area from the total floor space.
0.2092 W/m-K 3.3523107 m2 /s 657J/Kg-K
C. Simulation
The simulation is done in a scaled down room of the
TABLE II measurements given above. They have been carried out using
T HERMAL P ROPERTIES OF VACUUM I NSULATION PANEL . the Energy2D software. Energy2D is an interactive and visual
simulation program.It enables the simulation of all the three
Thermal Conductivity Thermal Diffusivity Specific Heat Capacity heat transfer modes, which is convection,conduction and radi-
0.0028 W/m-K 1.26108 m2 /s 837J/Kg-K ation.In the conduction mode the heat transfer is remarkably
accurate in the software. External factors like atmospheric
temperature and pressure are assumed to be from coastal
California. The outside temperature is taken according to the
TABLE III
F URNISHINGS DATA . average temperature of coastal California [16], which is 24
degrees celsius.
Room Floor Type Area of Furniture Area of Exposed Carpet The following are the models of the room:
Room 1 Carpet 8460m2 4000m2
Room 2 Carpet 11136m2 784m2
III. C ONCLUSION
To conclude there are very distinct differences in between
the thermal behaviours of room 1 and room 2. Thus proving
that the HVAC system runs for a longer duration to cool
a room with furniture having a larger surface area. This
brings up the importance of furniture design in a commercial
building.
Fig. 4. Graph of Room 2
The total energy consumption of an office building per
year is 408,735 KWh (calculated from [19]). It has been
calculated that reducing the run time of the HVAC system, R EFERENCES
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