M. Beccali, P. Finocchiaro, R. Corrao, V. Balsamo, D. Giordano
Year:
2008
Bibliographic info:
29th AIVC Conference " Advanced building ventilation and environmental technology for addressing climate change issues", Kyoto, Japan, 14-16 October 2008

Traditional and modem natural ventilationtechniques have been integrated in a hybridsystem for a retrofitting of a public building inthe city of Mazara del Vallo (Ttaly). The hybridventilation and air cooling system integrates awind tower, an indirect evaporative heatexchanger, a ground cooling pipe network andventilated fagade. The first idea was to design apassive cooling system inspired to the typicalwind towers of the Middle East, being the areavery well ventilated. On the other hand, airhumidity in summer is quite high and thereforethe effectiveness of indirect evaporative coolingcan be quite low. For this reason, it was adopteda second passive cooling system consisting in aground heat exchanger which cools downfurther the air stream. Air exiting form theburied pipes is then drawn into the building. Thewhole system has been designed in order toachieve the required air-flow rate only by meansof wind pressure and stack effect.From the thermal point of view, the systemwas designed, modelled and tested by using adynamic simulation software (TRNSY S). Thebuilding has been simulated with a two-zonesmodel coupled with a natural ventilated fagade.The climate of the site as well as the influenceof the solar radiation on the building wereinvestigated by means of the softwareECOTECT. Results are interesting in terms ofenergy saving for cooling and air circulation andgives useful hints to refine the design process.