Underoor Air Distribution Design Guide

Humidity Control
Humidity control is extremely important and interestingly, exists in most climates, not just the traditional hot and humid climates. Controlling humidity is the most common question when discussing the concepts of underoor air distribution, or displacement air distribution. Controlling humidity means different things to different people as their personal perspectives are different. In the ofce environment, humidity control means limiting the upper humidity level to the guidelines of ASHRAE Standard 55 in order to provide good thermal comfort. Museums often need humidity levels to be maintained in a narrow range to slow or prevent decay in artwork and historical displays. Temperature control is automatically part of a building HVAC equipment design, while humidity control is not always automatically included in buildings located in areas that are not considered hot and humid. And if humidity control is included, it may only be to maintain a humidity level that does not exceed the recommended upper limit of ASRHAE Standard 55. In fact, most buildings experience a drift of humidity levels from hour to hour. Building Shells Are Sources of Humidity All buildings leak air through the building shell. In a humid climate, the amount of leakage is directly related to how much energy must be expended to control the humidity level in the interior spaces. The ASRHAE Humidity Control Design Guide for Commercial and Institutional Buildings encourages designers to think of buildings as "very leaky refrigerators". this is an accurate analogy as most tight constructed buildings have been determined to leak around a minimum of one air changes in three hours. Poorly constructed buildings may experience two air changes an hour, or more. This leakage is a direct transfer of moisture into or out of the interior zones and needs to be accounted for in the building moisture loads. When an open plenum return is used in an exterior zone, the HVAC designer must take care to prevent negative pressurization in the plenum space.This negative pressurization can and will cause air to inltrate through the building walls and will provide a transport of moisture from the outside if the outside environment has more moisture in the air than the interior does.The best solution to this issue is to use ducted returns. In an effort to minimize the ductwork in an underoor or displacement designed building, the returns should be placed as close to the air handling equipment, or duct chases. Design Suggestions The HVAC designer is responsible for the control of humidity levels and his selection of equipment will make or break the design. Although there are many factors which will affect the control of humidity in the space, this discussion will focus on major issues and make some recommendations that will assist in building design. Pretreat Ventilation Air In a humid climate, the biggest source of moisture is typically the ventilation air from the outside. This typically accounts for about 50 to 80% of the building moisture load in typical commercial buildings. It is entirely likely that when this ventilation air is pretreated for humidity control, the entire building humidity load will be controlled without any additional moisture removal. Figure 58 illustrates one approach for humidity control commonly known as Side-Stream Bypass. The cooling coil is operated to produce 50-55F leaving air temperature for dehumidication. A portion of the return air is bypassed before the coil and mixed with the conditioned air to achieve proper temperature and humidity prior to delivery to the displacement diffuser. Only the outdoor air and a part of the return air are actually directed through the coil.This moisture control of the outside air will require the outside air to be cooled to a temperature below the dewpoint. In an underoor or displacement air distribution system that will mean the supply air temperature from the air handling equipment will be signicantly lower than the recommended design supply zone air temperatures. The air will need to be reheated to prevent occupant dissatisfaction from the temperature of the supply air. Designers typically and appropriately size the cooling coils on peak sensible load (the hottest part of the weather cycle). Unfortunately, the peak latent load is typically not connected to the peak sensible load. This means that the total load (sensible + latent) may peak when the outdoor dew point temperature is the highest, not the dry bulb temperature. Another option for humidity control is the series type fan powered terminal (Figure 59). In this application the primary air is cooled to 55F or less at the air handler to provide dehumidication. The fan terminal is used to increase the supply air temperature to an acceptable level before entering the zone. Conditioned air is supplied to the primary valve of the terminal via a supply duct. Return air is induced into the return air opening from the return air plenum. The fan delivers a constant air volume to the zone. The proportion of primary and return air is controlled to maintain a supply air temperature above 63F . Control Tip Consider the use of a dedicated outdoor dehumidify and provide the required ventilation air to the zone. solution may have a higher cost, but will provide the most humidity control in most buildings, particularly in zones that equipment such as mechanical rooms, and closets.

UNDERFLOOR AIR DISTRIBUTION PRODUCTS

Figure 58: Side Stream Bypass Humidity Control

Figure 59: Series Fan Terminal

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All Metric dimensions ( ) are soft conversion. Imperial dimensions are converted to metric and rounded to the nearest millimetre.

Copyright E.H. Price Limited 2007.

Underoor Air Distribution Design Guide

Humidity Control
Direct Expansion Roof Top Units DX packaged roof top units may be used to condition the raised oor cavities used in UFAD. However, care must be exercised to select the proper sized equipment and controls to maintain moisture removal. The issue is that at part-loads, the coil temperature is often raised to prevent sub-cooling the zone. This means that not enough moisture will be removed by the cooling coil which will allow the humidity levels to rise in an uncontrolled manner. Simply sizing the coil for the highest total load will not prevent this issue in latent capacity if the control is based upon only the zone dry-bulb temperature and not also the humidity level. Control Tip When a DX system is oversized, the compressors will remove the cooling load with very little cycle time.Then the compressors shut down and the moisture on the coil will re-evaporate and be added to the air. Additionally, the ventilation air is still required and will also transport moisture into the zone. The net effect is a humid occupied zone. Dedicated Dehumidication and Energy Recovery When the exhaust air exits the building at the same point as the supply air enters, a heat exchanger can be used to provide reheat to the supply air which will reduce the load on the equipment to provide the suggested supply air temperatures for underoor and displacement air distribution. When moisture loads are high, it is often cost effective to use separate dehumidication equipment such as an active Desiccant Dehumidier (dry wheel, or liquid system), or a Mechanical Dehumidier (condenser and evaporator coils in the air stream). Dehumidication Dehumidication is actually quite simple. Merely place enough dry air into the building space to absorb the excess humidity. Having said that, the issues complicated in that many different methods exist to take the moisture out of the air and many difculties exist in the control of this equipment. ASHRAE has several recommendations for dehumidication of a building: Dry the ventilation air rst as the bulk of the moisture load in buildings is due to the ventilation air. Lower the design dewpoint and raise the interior set point dry bulb temperature. When the occupants of a building are in a dry climate, RH < 45%, they will have the same perceived comfort level at 78F as they would at 74F and 50% RH. Interestingly, most people nd the dryer and warmer combination more comfortable. Downsize the cooling equipment and use a dehumidier. If the cooling system is not required to remove latent loads, it can typically have a smaller cooling capacity. This will raise the overall efciency of the HVAC system and allow for more localized cooling in high sensible loadings such as call centers. This is a great approach for the use of fan air columns in a raised oor application. Remember to analyze the dehumidication cycle at the peak moisture removal load as well as the peak temperature point. Load Reduction Equipment It is outside the scope of this design guide to provide design criteria for the many different types of energy recover / load reduction equipment available on the HVAC market today. Several different systems that maybe appropriate for the building design are: Passive Desiccant Wheels these wheels can transfer between 10 and 90% of the heat and moisture difference between two air streams. These wheels do not use heated air to remove the moisture, but rely upon dry air. Active Desiccant Wheels these wheels use heated air to remove the moisture from the desiccant and can deeply dehumidify the air as a result. Heat Pipes these are often used to improve the operation of desiccant or mechanical dehumidiers. They are sealed tubes that contain some liquid and a gas a low pressure. The liquid in the bottom of the tube will boil at low temperatures (cooling the air outside the tube) and drift upward where it will condense and reheat heat (heating the air outside the tube).These heat pipes are usually capable of transferring between 45 and 60% of the temperature difference between two air streams. Plate Heat Exchangers hot and cold air streams are separated by thin plates and the air passes through the exchanger in an "x" or "z" pattern. Plate heat exchangers are usually able to transfer between 60 and 65% of the temperature difference between the two air streams. Economizer Cycle For "free-cooling", an economizer cycle is typically used. Unfortunately, most are merely temperature controlled and may not prevent humidity control issues year the entire year. Enthalpy control is often used, but do not always solve this issue. The theory for enthalpy control is to use outdoor air when the total heat outdoors (the enthalpy) is lower than the total heat inside. This approach does not consider the difference in dew points between inside and outside. Air with a lower enthalpy from the outside may contain more moisture than is desired in the space. It is recommended that all economizer cycles are set so that the outdoor air is never used when the outdoor dewpoint is higher than the interior dew point design point.

Copyright E.H. Price Limited 2007.

All Metric dimensions ( ) are soft conversion. Imperial dimensions are converted to metric and rounded to the nearest millimetre.

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UNDERFLOOR AIR DISTRIBUTION PRODUCTS