PERSONALIZED FABRIC AIR DIFFUSER

Abstract

The personalized fabric air-conditioning system are getting more practical nowadays and quite often used in industry in order to cater the gaps between conventional air-conditioning system. As such, in this research paper the objective is to design and construct the personalized fabric air diffusers/ducts (PFAD) as prototype. A comparisons by CFD simulation analysis were conducted to choose the optimum design for the PFAD with round shape diffuser/duct with diameter of 40 mm, 60 mm, 80 mm, 100mm and 120 mm. it is founds that the 80 mm has the better air distribution coverage with respect to the occupant’s working station plane. The PFAD materials used in this research studies is the permeable fabric as one of its big feature is to avoid any condensation to occur. The PFAD with diameter of 80 mm were fabricated into 10 inlet. The PFAD prototype were designated to deliver the minimum requirement of 5 l/s per person as stated in ASHRAE 62.1. The personalized fabric air diffusers/duct (PFAD) was installed in a lecture/lab room with customize arranged table and chairs of 10 occupants were experimented and simulation analysis by using ANSYS FLUENT Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was made. The result obtained shows by using PFAD, it still can achieve the ventilation rate of 5 l/s per person as listed in ASHRAE 62.1. The air velocity and temperature is within the occupant’s acceptable range of 0.2 m/s – 0.8 m/s and 25.8 – 26.3 as mentioned in ASHRAE 55. By using PFAD, the air-conditioning system can have 20 % (120 % after PFAD installation compared to 100 % with conventional air-conditioning system) energy utilization effects after installation. All the results was validated & verified, it was observed that the level of errors in this research is up to 6.4 % which considered as acceptable from previous study. Hopefully, this research paper can be helpful and improve more for development of fabric personalized air conditioning system especially in personalized fabric air diffuser (PFAD).