PR2019

The Proceedings of the 40th AIVC - 8th TightVent - 6th venticool Conference: "From energy crisis to sustainable indoor climate - 40 years of AIVC" held in Ghent, Belgium on 15-16 October 2019.

The Presentations at the 40th AIVC - 8th TightVent - 6th venticool Conference: "From energy crisis to sustainable indoor climate - 40 years of AIVC" held in Ghent, Belgium on 15-16 October 2019.

Regional climate change in cities is the most documented phenomenon of climate change . Higher urban temperatures are  documented experimentally for more than 450 major cities in the world. Numerous investigations demonstrate that the mean magnitude of the temperature increase may exceed 4-6 C, while at the peak it may exceed  10 C. The serious increase of the frequency and the strength of heat waves creates strong synergies between the global and regional climate change and intensify the magnitude of the overheating 

Traffic sources contribute a large portion of the ambient nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter and ozone concentrations, the three ambient air pollutants with the largest impact on human health in Europe (EEA, 2018). High spatial resolution air quality data capturing the high spatial variability of this traffic related pollution are necessary in order to inform policy. The approach of environmental protection agencies around the world to measure using expensive monitoring stations allows monitoring in high temporal, but not spatial, resolution (Snyder et al., 2013).

Smartness is all around us. The HVAC industry is developing more and more products that have sensors, are intelligent, are connected to the Internet and are being controlled via apps. According to a recent European survey among installers, the request and demand from clients for installing home automation and smart products is the highest for HVAC installations. 

In future building regulations 2020, building performance is going to be extended to global performance, including indoor air quality (IAQ). In the energy performance (EP) field, successive regulations pushed for a "performance-based" approach, based on an energy consumption requirement at the design stage. Nevertheless, ventilation regulations throughout the world are still mostly based on prescriptive approaches, setting airflows requirements. A performance-based approach for ventilation would insure that ventilation is designed to avoid risks for occupant’s health. 

In the field of energy performance, successive regulations pushed a "performance-based" approach, based at least on an energy consumption requirement at the design stage for heating and/or cooling systems (Spekkink 2005). Nevertheless, in the field of building ventilation, regulations throughout the world are mainly still based on “prescriptive” approaches, using airflows or air change rates requirements.  

As a consequence of the sustainable politics demanding regulations that allow the use of more efficient ventilation systems, the IAQ Spanish regulations were modified and enforced in 2017. The new regulations became performance-based in order to accommodate the use of systems which are capable of adapting required ventilation rates to real needs. The new requirement is based on both CO2 concentration and a minimum ventilation rate. 

The new IAQ requirement is able to keep acceptable IAQ values and to reduce energy demand in relation to the previous IAQ requirement. 

Performance based approached for ventilation started to be used in Belgium in 2008 in the context of EP regulation. Until 2015, demand controlled ventilation (DCV) systems were considered as “innovative” products and were not directly taken into account in the EP calculation method. Their energy performance was then considered through a principle of equivalency. A first performance based approach was developed in this frame.