Studyind thermal performance of split-type air-conditioners at building re-entrant via computer simulation

The  use  of  split-type  air-conditioners  in  new apartment buildings becomes popular in Hong Kong. One requirement for their effective use is satisfactory heat rejection at the outdoor condensing units.  When a group of outdoor units is working together, the heat released by one condenser may affect the heat rejection rates at the others, and hence may deteriorate their performance. At the layout-design stage, an HVAC engineer often finds it difficult to predict such a thermal effect, say, when over a hundred of these outdoor units are to be placed inside one single re-entrant of a high-rise building. This paper presents  a simulation approach to tackle the problem. The computation technique is demonstrated by its application to evaluate the effect of proper spacing between adjacent condensing units.