FINAL REPORT
Executive Summary
This report intends to analyze the engineering systems of the Health and Human Development (HHD) building, a mixed-use office/education building located in the Pennsylvania State University (University Park campus). The report will demonstrate observations, analysis of simulations, and recommendations created specifically for HHD that aim to promote comfort, while finding opportunities for energy and cost savings.
Several methods and tools are utilized to analyze HHD in order to find areas of the building where improvements could result in energy savings or where the systems perform poorly. The engineering systems of the building are compared to the ASHRAE standards 62.1 and 90.1 to find whether the systems are compliant to the standards. As for the mechanical systems of the building, they are modeled using the simulation program Trane TRACE 700. The results of the simulation show the energy consumption and a breakdown of the systems consumptions.
An in-depth analysis of the building mechanical systems shows potential to provide more comfort, better air quality, and a reduction in energy consumption. A VAV with reheat system serves the atrium space throughout the year. A radiant floor heating system is proposed as an alternative. Designing a radiant floor system creates less heating load on the original system, allowing space for downsizing the heating coil and providing 100% outside air to the space. As a result, an alternative single zone VAV system is proposed to replace the original VAV system with reheat. Coupling the single zone VAV system with the existing energy recovery unit, as well as allowing it to operate with a differential enthalpy economizer, creates an opportunity to provide high quality air with minimum or no increase in energy consumption. Simulating the proposed radiant floor heating and single zone VAV systems using TRACE 700 shows a 3.2% decrease in the peak cooling load and a 20% decrease in the peak heating load.
The depth analysis of the mechanical systems in HHD show another area of potential increase in comfort, air quality, and reduction in energy consumption. There are six labs located on the 2nd floor of the renovated portion in HHD. These labs are served with separate fan coil units. This method of serving the labs may not be the most efficient method. FCUs are not the most efficient in terms of energy consumption, and also limit the capability of introducing more outside air to the labs. A bypass VAV system is proposed to replace the FCUs. The proposed system would be coupled with the existing heat recovery unit and operate with the differential enthalpy economizer in order to allow 100% outside air into the labs without a significant increase in energy consumption. The bypass system also contributes to the reduction of energy consumption, since it allows
The proposed designs require a structural analysis to determine whether the structural system would be able to handle an additional mechanical system in its mechanical penthouse, which is the structural breadth of this report. To further ensure a comfortable environment in HHD, a classroom is chosen to be acoustically analyzed and determine its compatibility with learning activates as a part of the acoustical breadth in the report.