Summer is upon us and ACs are our saviours in the dreading and unforgiving hot climate. ACs at our home are surely simple to manage. However, in huge office spaces with centralised ACs, the setup it a lot more complex.
Also known as HVAC systems, in such buildings, climate control and ventilation takes place in a centralised spot, outside the building. It is managed by the AHU or Air Handling Unit that enabled better maintenance and no AC noise indoors.?
Air ducts are responsible for flowing of air from one room to another, evenly. And this is only possible if all the components are working efficiently, in tandem with one another. Even a tiny faulty component could severely impact the smooth functioning of HVAC and spike operation costs. This could in-turn consume more electricity and thus not just cost more to the company but also affect the environment.
However, now researchers at IIT Mandi have published a new study in the Journal of Building Engineering, that reveals new algorithms for component failure detection as well as diagnosis that can make the operation more energy efficient.?
According to Tushar Jain, Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Electrical Engineering at IIT Mandi, "Variable-air-volume (VAV) terminal boxes are an important component of centralized HVAC systems. Any faults or failures in these VAV boxes can drastically affect the control performance.?
He further stated, ¡°The VAV dampers play a significant role in the supervisory health-aware control strategy of the system, and timely and automatic detection of faults in these components can be very useful in the management of the health of the HVAC".
According to researchers, the algorithm estimates the magnitude of the failure of VAV dampers with the help of analytical models that are applicable across a variety of unpredictable operating conditions like weather, temperature outdoors, etc.
"The wall temperature, which is usually ignored in climate control, is an important parameter for efficient function of the HVAC, and our algorithm takes this into consideration", he added.?
Simulation studies have revealed the successful estimation of the magnitude of VAV multiple damper faults. The researchers are now working on making a decentralised and distributed fault diagnosis as well as strategies which are fault-tolerant to ensure energy-efficient operation of HVAC systems.