Energy Saving Potentials of Dedicated Outdoor Air System in High-rise Apartment Buildings

The main thrust of this paper is to investigate the optimized supply air condition and energy saving potentials of a dedicated outdoor air system (DOAS) applied to a high-rise apartment building. For a typical 132-m2 apartment unit, it was assumed that two different systems, namely, a centralized DOAS integrated with ceiling radiant cooling panel (CRCP) and a decentralized energy recovery ventilator (ERV) operated with packaged air conditioner, were installed. The transient behavior and control characteristics of each system were modeled numerically using a commercial equation solver program and annual cooling coil load and heating load reduction potential of the two systems were compared. It was found in this research that a DOAS-CRCP system can reduce the cooling coil load by over 21% annually compared to the current energy recovery ventilator-packaged air conditioner pair. In addition, the use of DOAS can reduce the annual ventilation heating load by over 40% when the enthalpy wheel and the sensible wheel of the DOAS unit operate simultaneously. It was also found that the optimized dew point temperature of the DOAS supply air that accommodates the latent load of a space is 11–12°C.