heating demand

This manuscript discusses the energy-saving benefits of gas-phase air cleaning in Nordic buildings. Ventilation systems are crucial in creating a healthy and comfortable indoor environment. These systems account for around 30% of building heat losses in cold climate regions. Indoor emissions from materials, occupants, and outdoor pollutants are key to ensuring acceptable indoor air quality levels. Therefore, this study focuses on using gas-phase air cleaning technologies in low-energy centralized air handling units.

Ventilation in buildings dilutes the indoor air pollutants by replacing part of the air with outdoor air to guarantee an adequate indoor air quality (IAQ). In heating-dominated climates, the exchanged air has a lower mean temperature than the indoor air, which leads to a surplus heating demand in the building. A heat exchanger recovers part of the heat from the expelled air, contributing to the reduction of the extra heating demand. Smart ventilation systems work with reduced airflows, without compromising the IAQ and lowering the heating demand.

The increase of the ambient air temperatures in urban areas during the past few decades, due to the heat island phenomenon and the warming of the lower atmosphere, has strong impact on the energy profile of buildings, the comfort conditions, the air pollution and the indoor environment, especially in the Mediterranean regions with hot climate conditions. The present paper focuses on the investigation of the impact of the temperature increase in nine Greek cities over the last forty years on the energy demand of buildings.

This paper presents the energy savings thatcould be obtained by the appropriate design ofthe building in terms of morphology, thermalinertia and glazed area. Based on an extendeddatabase of values obtained by simulations, thisparametric study gives a new approach for thearchitects or design engineers as supportguidelines in the very first stage of their projectsin finding efficiently energetic solutions.One of the analyzed parameters is the buildingshape coefficient which is defined as the ratiobetween the volume of a built form and itsexternal heating losses area.