AIR HANDLING UNITS The changing landscape for AHUs
Since the implementation of the new EcoDesign EU Commission Regulation 1253/2014 in January 2016, and phase two in January 2018, there has been a change in the landscape for air handling units as Dene Kent, sales director and head of ventilation at Swegon explains.
T
he requirement for all air handling units (excluding certain applications) to have heat recovery capability and to minimise efficiencies, has created a more level playing field for all suppliers and manufacturers. Initially there was a lot of confusion as to how this regulation should be applied and the UK industry was fairly slow to take up the requirements of the regulation. Now in its third year, the regulation has now been fully adopted and understood by manufacturers, design consultants and installers. The regulation has determined how AHUs should be presented in terms of both their efficiency for energy recovery and the energy they consume to move the amount of air, as well as recovery of the energy in that air. The regulation has also recognised that there is a trade off between higher efficiency heat recovery devices and the air pressure drop they create, which uses higher fan energy. This means they allow a higher fan energy consumption to compensate for the higher efficiency energy recovery, which gives a greater return than just focussing on fan energy, which current building legislation does.
There is also an emphasis on the energy used by the AHU alone, irrespective of the system it is going to be used in; this
is called SFPint and would allow the end user, designer or installer to benchmark different units against each other to ascertain which is the most energy efficient. The change in these regulations and standards lends itself to be more suitable for standardised and industrialised manufacturers, who can verify that their product ranges are compliant with the regulations. Using a standardised range with independent certification from bodies such as Eurovent gives customers assurance that products are compliant and meet legislation. This also gives customers the confidence that they can choose the most energy efficient equipment to help with life cycle running costs, as well as determining capital cost. There is always a need for bespoke equipment, however, it is more difficult to calculate all the requirements needed to meet the new directives with a truly bespoke requirement.
The directive also puts the responsibility on the manufacturer to ensure that equipment is compliant with the regulations, irrespective of the requirements of the end user, designer or installer, so it is important to make sure that the manufacturer issues a compliance document with their selected solution to state compliance with the regulation.
18
May 2018
www.acr-news.com
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