Analysis of dedicated outdoor air systems for different climates

Dedicated outdoor air systems (DOAS) have been proposed to treat the outdoor air before it enters the building and thus reduce the load on the zone equipment. This paper presents a study of different DOAS configurations and their energy and power consumptions for multiple climates of the United States. Based on the simulation results, the DOAS showed promise in reducing energy consumption relative to the baseline system in the office building in all climates studied. A more complex DOAS did not show significant improvement over a simple DOAS consisting of only a preheat coil and enthalpy wheel.