Analysis of energy consumption and thermal comfort in building : a case study of AIT library | |
| Author | Sugunan, Shruthi |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.SE-23-02 |
| Subject(s) | Buildings--Energy consumption--Thailand--Management Buildings--Thermal properties--Case studies |
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering Sustainable Energy Transition |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | The building sector including residential, commercial, and industrial consumes 40% of the global energy that results in 2/3rd of the world’s GHG emission. In 2022 81.3% of the world’s energyidemand is by fossil fuels. In a built environment substantial amount of energy are utilized by HVAC systems. About 60% of the energy consumediby buildings in tropical countries is employed for air iconditioning. In 2022 about 32% of the annual campus electricity is used by chiller plant. This study was aimed to analyze the currentienergy usage and thermalicomfort of air conditioning systems in buildings and to find measure and methods to improve the energy usage. In order to do so, the study had taken AIT Library as the case study building. The methodology included literature review, experimentation, analysis of current energy usage in AIT library and came up with various measures and methods to improve the energy usage and carried out a detailed study on decentralized air conditioning system (VRF) to analyze and compare the energy usage with the existing system. The experimental observation found that the library is not in thermal comfort zone. The annual electricityiconsumption of the current system is about 200.1MWh and the specific electricity consumption is about 102kWh/m2/year. Operating a decentralized system can improve ithe thermal comfort and energy usage. It is estimated that the annualielectricity consumption for air conditioning using a decentralized air conditioning system iis about 150.6MWh and 121.3MWh respectively for the current operating practices and the optimized operating practices by taking occupancy into consideration. The specific electricity consumption for the decentralized air conditioning system is about 76.9kWh/m2/year and 61.9kWh/m2/year for the current operating practice and the optimized one, respectively. By adopting a decentralized system for air conditioning the library can achieve better thermal comfort, improve energy usage, eliminate energy losses by heat gain and water leakage in the distribution network. Moreover, the economized electricity usage with decentralized system would help to recover ithe capital investment in less than 3iyears by doing cost benefits analysis. Barriers and challenges faced by various stakeholders in implementing decentralized air conditioning systems are found out by Suitability, Acceptability and Feasibility analysis. |
| Year | 2023 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Environment, Resources, and Development (SERD) |
| Department | Department of Energy and Climate Change (Former title: Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Change (DEECC)) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Sustainable Energy Transition (SE) |
| Chairperson(s) | Salam, P. Abdul; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Weerakorn Ongsakul;Singh, Jai Govind; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Asian Institute of Technology Scholarships; |
| Degree | Thesis (M. Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2023 |