AIR QUALITY
Effi ciency in the built environment through VRF
Colin Goode, product manager – Fujitsu General Air Conditioning UK talks about the benefi ts of 3-pipe VRF.
W
ith Greta Thunberg frequently in the headlines and Earth Day only a few weeks ago, the environment, renewable energy and living greener lives are agendas that are growing more pressing each day.
In the air conditioning sector, we have the technologies available to assist us to achieve some of our environmental goals, but do we know how best to harness and apply them?
Under the Climate Change Act, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) was formed to work as a regulatory body to assess any proposals and corresponding results. A CCC 2008 report paved the way for the UK’s commitment to an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (from 1990) by 2050. The structure for meeting this target has been set through a series of ‘Carbon Budgets’, the next being the third and we should see a 37% reduction by
2020.
An introduction of Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards for both domestic and commercial properties has been just one of the changes that has been implemented to address the carbon emissions from the built environment sector – a regulation placing financial restrictions on building owners for letting or selling properties that do not meet the minimum requirements. This is a step to a more efficient built environment. Whether new build or retrofit, the requirement of air conditioning in the UK to provide cooling as well as heating is becoming more commonplace as buildings evolve and become better insulated.
System efficiencies are judged on a standard set of conditions, but are we realising their full energy-saving potential when air conditioning systems are being selected and installed?
Air conditioning is the transfer of thermal energy from one place to another. As we would traditionally know it, we use a refrigerant circuit to absorb thermal energy from a room via an evaporator and reject it outside via the condenser, cooling the room in the process. During heating the same process occurs, but thermal energy is absorbed from outside and rejected into the room, thus heating the space.
Table 1: The Carbon Budget Schedule (Reducing UK emissions – 2018 Progress Report to Parliament, CCC)
When we apply this process to a Variable Refrigerant Flow system (VRF) there are generally multiple points
22 June 2019
www.acr-news.com
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