Thermal environment and ventilation efficiency in a simulated office room with personalized micro-environment and fully mixed ventilation systems

One of the major challenges in modern buildings is to guarantee healthy indoor air quality and excellent thermal comfort in an energy efficient manner. In this study, the performance of a micro-environment system combined radiant panel and convective flow was designed and compared to an all-air diffuse ceiling ventilation (DCV) system. In the analyzed micro-environment system of personalized ventilation and radiant panel (PVRP), two local personal air terminal devices supplied clean air directly to occupants. The radiant panels were used to satisfy the required cooling load. The results show that the air change efficiency with the PVRP was over 60% which was better than the fully mixing flow (50%). The mean age of air of personalized airflow system was smaller at the micro-environment near the workstation than the DCV despite the airflow rate was much lower. Furthermore, the air temperature near the workstation can be maintained at designed value with the PVRP and the draught rate can be kept at acceptable level. Furthermore, the vertical temperature difference did not cause thermal discomfort with the PVRP system near the workstation.