Ventilation of air-conditioned residential buildings: A case study in Hong Kong

More and more studies reported that there were insufficient ventilation and excessive CO_2 concentration in air-conditioned residential buildings, but few solutions were provided. This study investigates the overnight evolution of CO_2 concentration in air-conditioned residential buildings and then focuses mainly on the evaluation of three ventilation strategies, including overnight natural ventilation, short-term mechanical ventilation and short-term natural ventilation. On-site measurements were conducted in a typical residential bedroom in Hong Kong in September. The indoor and outdoor CO_2 concentration, air temperature and relative humidity as well as the outdoor wind speed during the measurements were analysed. Ventilation rates were calculated based on the time series of CO_2 concentration. This study confirms that additional ventilation is usually needed in air-conditioned residential buildings. Overnight natural ventilation with even a small opening is associated with excessive energy consumption and deteriorated indoor thermal environment. Short-term natural ventilation strategies are inefficient and uncontrollable. Compared to the best short-term natural ventilation strategy, a reasonably designed short-term mechanical ventilation strategy requires only a 41% of ventilation period to complete one full replacement of indoor air and to reach a lower indoor CO_2 concentration. Nighttime case studies and a theoretical analysis suggest that a few several-minute mechanical ventilation periods could potentially maintain an acceptable indoor air quality for a normal sleeping period of 8 h.

（l）Performance comparisons of two system sizing approach-es for net zero energy building clusters under uncertainties,P10- 21, by Limei Shen, Yongjun SunAbstract： Uncertainties have significant impacts on system sizing in net zero energy building （NZEB） clusters and they have to be wel l considered. Through Monte Carlo simulation and statistical analysis, the impacts of three typical types of parameter uncertain-ties have been investigated in the study. Considering the uncertain-ty impacts, this study aims to compare the multi-criteria perfor-mance of two design approaches for system sizing of a NZEB cluster. The first one is the conventional separated design in which dedicated systems are separately designed in individual buildings. The second one is the integrated design in which integrated sys-tems are designed to provide services to all buildings.