Ensuring an indoor environmental quality that is acceptable to the majority of users, while also being energy efficient is a challenge. In addition, both user demands and the climate change are making it even more difficult to ensure good indoor environmental quality. One of the solutions to combat climate change is free cooling systems, such as ventilative cooling.
One of the challenges for the design of ventilative cooling systems in general has been the lack of technical documents, such as standards dealing with the design process for free cooling systems such as Ventilative cooling. Another challenge has been that HVAC engineers have to get used to dealing with natural ventilation and ventilative cooling, as these technologies are not (only) based on mechanical principles. They may be reluctant to use these technologies because they threaten traditional fixed-fee design services and this needs to be addressed.
Therefore this article presents eight design steps to follow as part of the new forthcoming European Technical Specification “Ventilative Cooling Systems – Design” for the holistic design of ventilative cooling systems in buildings starting from the definition of performance criteria and requirements to the final definition of controls and operations. This design process should be used by e.g. HVAC engineers or architects.
