A New Operating Strategy for Economizer Dampers of VAV System

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

Publication Title

Energy and Buildings

Volume

40

Issue

3

First page number:

289

Last page number:

299

Abstract

The paper proposes a new operating strategy for the outdoor, discharge, and recirculation air dampers of the economizer in VAV system, called split-signal damper control strategy. The strategy controls the outdoor air by only one damper while keeping the remaining dampers full open. The discharge or recirculation air damper is modulated to control the amount of outdoor air introduced into the system while keeping the two remaining dampers full open. Since at least two dampers are always kept fully open during the occupied times, the strategy can provide a minimum static pressure drop in economizer dampers and results in minimum energy use in return and supply fans. An additional advantage is that the proposed strategy prevents reverse airflow through the discharge air damper of a VAV system that uses a volume matching control strategy. The proposed strategy along with the existing strategies such as the three-coupled dampers used in most existing system and the two-coupled dampers are evaluated on an existing system using 1-year long measured data set, along with an economizer damper model developed and validated in this paper. The simulation results show that the annual energy savings in supply and return fans of an existing system, compared to the traditional strategy of three-coupled dampers, are 12% and 5%, respectively.

Keywords

Air conditioning – Energy consumption; Air handling unit; Air side economizer; Control theory; Damper control strategy; Damping (Mechanics) – Equipment and supplies; Energy conservation; Variable air volume systems (Air conditioning); VAV system

Disciplines

Energy Systems | Heat Transfer, Combustion | Mechanical Engineering

Language

English

Permissions

Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the item. Publisher policy does not allow archiving the final published version. If a post-print (author's peer-reviewed manuscript) is allowed and available, or publisher policy changes, the item will be deposited.

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