HVAC Systems I Transcript

2012 Schneider Electric. All rights reserved. All trademarks provided are the property of their respective owners.
HVAC Systems I: Introduction to HVAC Systems

Slide 1: HVAC Systems I
Welcome to the course HVAC Systems I: Introduction to HVAC Systems.

Slide 2: ASHRAE
This course was produced with the support of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and
Air-Conditioning Engineers, or ASHRAE.

Slide 3: How to Use This Course
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Click each button to learn more about the course navigation, or if you are already familiar with this
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screen.

Slide 4: Objectives
This course is the first in a series of three courses: HVAC Systems I through III.

At the completion of this course, you will be able to list the seven HVAC processes, list the main
types of components in an HVAC system, identify the three main types of HVAC systems,
describe the difference between central and unitary systems, identify the advantages and
disadvantages of all-air systems, list the three main types of duct configuration in all-air systems,
and describe a simple single-duct, single-zone HVAC system.

In the courses that follow, you will look at the impact of various temperature control strategies and
designs in all-air systems, and look at alternatives incorporating water as the thermal medium.

Slide 5: Introduction
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning are critical for maintaining a comfortable, productive
environment. In residences and schools; retail stores, malls, and offices; and hospitals and
factories, people and equipment need to be not too warm and not too cold, not too dry and not
too humid, and perhaps most importantly, free from contaminants. Owners wish for all of this to
happen with the best combination of initial and lifecycle cost.

Slide 6: HVAC Processes
The scope of HVAC includes seven processes.

Click each tab to find out more.

Heating: Heating is the process of adding thermal energy to the conditioned space for the
purpose of raising or maintaining the temperature of the space.

Cooling: Cooling is the process of removing thermal energy from the conditioned space for the
purpose of lowering or maintaining the temperature of the space.

Humidifying: Humidifying is the process of adding water vapor to the air in the conditioned space
for the purposes of raising or maintaining the moisture content of the air.


Dehumidifying: Dehumidifying is the process of removing water vapor from the air in the
conditioned space for the purposes of lowering or maintaining the moisture content of the air.

Cleaning: Cleaning is the process of removing particulates (such as dust) and biological
contaminants (such as insects or pollen) from the air delivered to the conditioned space for the
purpose of improving or maintaining air quality.

Ventilating: Ventilating is the process of exchanging air between the outdoors and the
conditioned space for the purpose of diluting the gaseous contaminants in the air, and improving
or maintaining the air quality, composition, and freshness.

Air movement: Air movement is the process of circulating and mixing air through conditioned
spaces in the building for the purposes of achieving the proper ventilation and facilitating the
thermal energy transfer.

Slide 7: Climate and Time of Year
The requirements and importance of each of the seven HVAC processes varies depending on the
climate and time of year. Dry desert climates may not need any dehumidification. Hot climates
may not require any heating.

The term air conditioning is sometimes used in a narrow sense to mean cooling, perhaps with
some dehumidification, filtering, and ventilation. Note that if heating is required during the year, it
is still part of the total air conditioning system for the space, even if it is a completely separate
subsystem with no shared components.

Slide 8: Components Within the HVAC System
The permutations of components and configurations to constitute an HVAC system are virtually
endless. In this course, you will look at the main types of HVAC systems that you are likely to find.
You will examine how they work, including their advantages and disadvantages in terms of
energy efficiency.

Slide 9: HVAC Components: Four Categories
Components that you may find in your HVAC system can be split into four categories.

Click each tab to learn more.

Source components:

Source components provide primary heating and cooling effects. Such as:

Furnaces for making hot air.
Direct expansion coils for making cold air.
Boilers for making hot water or steam. The hot water or steam is distributed within the facility to
heat the air.
Chillers for making cold water. The cold water may be distributed within the facility to provide
cooling for air, or may be used to cool air at a central entry point, which is then distributed within
the space.
And, cooling towers to help reject heat from the facility to the outdoors.


Distribution components:

Distribution components transport heating and cooling effects from the source to the conditioned
space. Such as:

Pumps, pipes, coils, and valves for distributing cold water, hot water, or steam.
Fans, ducts, and dampers for distributing cool or warm air.

Delivery components:

Delivery components introduce the heating or cooling effect into conditioned spaces. These
components include the following:

Diffusers.
Baseboard radiators.
Fan-coil units.
And, a range of other terminal devices

Control components:

Control components regulate the operation of equipment and systems for comfort, process,
safety, and energy efficiency. These include:

Input devices such as sensors and pushbuttons.
Controllers.
And, controlled devices, such as actuators connected to valves or dampers.

Some controls may be manual, while others could be automatic. They may be tied together into a
building management system to optimize comfort, energy, and facility management labor.

Slide 10: HVAC Systems: Three Categories
There are three categories of HVAC systems that you will look at. They are classified by the types
of mediums they use for distributing heating and cooling effects. These three systems include all-
air systems, air-and-water systems, and all-water systems.

Slide 11: Central vs. Unitary Systems
HVAC systems and their related source components can be organized either as central systems,
which are systems with a collection of plants that provide service to a widespread area, or unitary
systems, which are local systems with packaged equipment that serve a particular area.


Central systems:

In "central systems," the major source components tend to be centralized in a machine room, and
provide support for an entire building or campus. Distribution, delivery, and control components
are dispersed throughout the building space.


Unitary systems:

In "unitary systems" or "local systems," components may be packaged together into a single
enclosure, such as air handling units that package multiple components including the air inlet,
filter, heating and cooling coils, humidifier, and fans. That local system would service a particular
space.

Slide 12: Comparing Central and Unitary Systems
In summary, HVAC systems may be organized as local systems, with packaged equipment that
serves a particular area. Or they may be organized as central systems with a collection of plants
that provide service to a widespread area.

A general advantage of a central system is that major equipment is centrally located in dedicated
service spaces. Maintenance can take place in unoccupied areas.

Another plus is that noisy equipment is located in an area that can be acoustically isolated.

Thirdly, piping to remove condensation that may form in systems that rely on water and HVAC
power wiring are not required in occupied areas. By comparison, unitary or local systems and fan-
coil systems that combine air and water require in-room condensate drain piping and HVAC
power wiring.

Slide 13: Interaction of Components
In this course, you will focus on overviews of how components work together in the HVAC system.
You can learn more detail about how each component functions and the energy-efficiency related
issues in Energy University courses dedicated to those components.

To achieve an understanding of these systems, it will be useful for you to understand terms which
you can learn in related Energy University courses.

For example, the course HVAC and Characteristics of Air deals with topics such as sensible and
latent heat, enthalpy, and relative humidity.
And the course HVAC Thermodynamic States deals with basic pressure, volume, and
temperature relationships.
If you prefer, you can continue with this course without taking the others, but some of the insights
presented may not be as easy to understand.

To continue in this course, you will start now by looking at all-air systems.

Slide 14: All-Air Systems
All-air systems provide sensible and latent cooling solely through cold supply air delivered to the
conditioned space. These systems do not provide supplemental cooling by refrigeration sources
within the zones or supply chilled water to the zones. Heating may be achieved by the same
supply airstream, with the heat source located in the central system equipment, or in a terminal
device serving a zone. Youll see more about terminal devices later in this series.

Slide 15: Advantages and Disadvantages of All-Air Systems
There are advantages and disadvantages of all-air systems.



Some advantages of all-air systems include the following:

They are well-suited to economical use and heat recovery.
They can support winter humidification and large-volume outdoor air requirements.
They are the best choice for close control of zone temperature and humidity.
They are a good choice where indoor air quality is a key concern.
They are suitable for smoke-control systems.
They are capable of simple seasonal changeover.
They are capable of simultaneous heating and cooling in different zones.

There are disadvantages as well:

A lot of energy is spent on moving air instead of heating or coolingabout 40% of the energy
use is consumed by fans.
Ductwork space requirements may add to building height.
Air balancing may be difficult. Air balancing is the process of ensuring adequate distribution of
air to all parts of the space.
Providing comfort in locations with low outdoor temperatures and typical building envelope
performance is difficult when warm air is used for perimeter heating.
Close coordination between mechanical designers, architectural designers, and structural
designers is required to provide ready maintenance accessibility to terminal devices.

Slide 16: Duct Configurations
There are many different ways of configuring an all-air system. Some examples include single-
duct systems, dual-duct systems, and multizone systems. You will look at single-duct systems
first.

Slide 17: Zoning
Before you look at the all-air system configurations, ensure you know what zones are.

Zones may be defined within a building to identify spaces expected to have similar thermal loads.
In single-duct and dual-duct systems, there may be a single zone, or there may be several. If
there is more than one zone, a terminal unit will be used to fine-tune the temperature control for
that space. You will learn more about this later.

Slide 18: Single-Duct Single-Zone Systems
Examine how one of the simpler configurations works. The example on this page is a single-duct,
single-zone, all-air system. These systems are typically served by packaged air conditioning units
with multiple components included in a single enclosure, often called air handling units.

Note that there are many variations on this approach. For example, in Nordic countries, most air
handling systems do not use return air. Instead, a heat recovery system is used to recover heat
from exhaust air and uses it to preheat outside air.

Navigate through this guided diagram with the arrows in the upper right.

Outside Air
Outside air enters the system (1) usually through a louver that prevents drawing rain into the
system.

Conditioned Space
The outside air is mixed with air returned from the conditioned space (2), is filtered, and, if
necessary, is preheated so that a humidifier can work effectively.

Cooling Coil
The outside air then passes over a cooling coil. Cooling is usually achieved with a coil containing
cold water or a refrigerant unit. If the air is too warm, it will give up heat to the cooling coil before
entering the space. This cooling coil may be inactive at some times of year.

Optional Preheat Coil
The preheat coil may also be used when the outside air is very cold to warm the air before it
passes over the cooling coil. The cooling coil may still contain water even when the chiller is
inactive, and very cold air could freeze the water in the coil and cause it to rupture. Pre-heating
the air prevents that from happening.

Heating Coil
If heating is incorporated in the system, a heating coil may also be present. The heating coil may
use electrical energy, gas, water, or steam. A temperature sensor provides input to the control
system for control of the heating and cooling coils.

Supply Fan
A supply fan moves the air into room (3).

Return Fan
A return vents air from the space (4). Optionally, a return fan may assist air to leave the space for
ventilation purposes. Return air from washrooms and other specific places like kitchens or certain
types of industrial spaces will be exhausted directly to the outside.

Mixed Air
Some of the remaining return air (5) may be mixed with outside air (6) and fed back into the
space. This is economical, since the return air has already been conditioned and may require less
energy to treat than outside air.


Slide 19: Pressure Balancing Outdoor Air
Recall that the previous page discussed four types of air in the single-duct, single-zone all-air
system.

A certain amount of outside air must be brought in for ventilation to dilute gaseous
contaminants, such as carbon dioxide.
Supply air is air that has been treated and is provided to the conditioned space.
Return air is removed from the space and may be mixed with outdoor air and recirculated
to the space.
And, relief air or exhaust air is vented to the outside.

Because outdoor air is brought in, there must be an equal quantity of total exhaust air to keep the
total amount of the air in the building constant. The relief air plus the washroom exhaust and
other exhaust air must be approximately equal to outside air that is brought in.

Slide 20: Pressure Balancing Exhaust Air
The reverse also applies. An exhaust system which is taking air out of the space should be
complemented with a make-up air system. If air is exhausted without adequate make-up air to
replace it, the pressure inside the building will become lower than the pressure outside. This
negative pressure can make it difficult and even unsafe when opening doors to the building. It
also encourages infiltration of air from the outside directly into the building space through any
cracks or gaps in the building envelope. This infiltration of unconditioned air can create drafts as
well as chilly or hot spots.

Hence in many countries, it is desirable to maintain a slightly positive pressure within the building.
There are exceptionsfor example, in Nordic countries most buildings are designed to have a
low negative pressure. This prevents indoor humidity from being driven into outer walls and
condensing, which can lead to mold growth.


Slide 21: Dampers
A damper is a controllable louver used to control airflow. It is important for these dampers to be
well designed for good mixing.

It is common to link the outside air damper, the return-air damper, and relief-air damper and use a
single device called an actuator to move them in unison. When the system is off, the outside and
relief dampers are fully closed and the return damper is fully open. As the system is brought
online, the outside and relief dampers open as the return closes.

Slide 22: Relief Air Fans
The use of relief air fans instead of return air fans is gaining acceptance. Relief air fans
accomplish pressure relief with less energy use, because they handle smaller volumes of exhaust
air, instead of all the return air. There are some complications associated with their use, which
are the domain of the HVAC professional.

Slide 23: Unitary Systems
A unitary system is a packaged unit that contains all of the components in one casing, except for
ductwork and water piping if it is necessary. Typically, these incorporate the refrigeration unit and
do not connect to a chiller.

Slide 24: Contents of a Unitary System
Examine the image to see the items that are contained in a single-packaged unit.

The contents include a refrigeration compressor, which may be air or water cooled; a condenser,
expansion valve, and evaporator; refrigerator piping; a fan or blower and a motor; a filter; controls;
and in many cases, a heating coil that is run on electricity or gas.

Unitary systems may be located on the ground next to a building or on the roof. Multiple units
may be used for large buildings. Air ducts penetrate the roof or walls to bring air into the space.

If gas or electricity is used to provide the heating and cooling power, those connections will be
required for the unit. In the case of cooling, the unit would then contain a refrigerant unit
comprising a compressor, condenser, expansion valve, and evaporator. You can learn about
what each of these parts does and how this unit works in the course on source cooling equipment.

If hot water or steam is used for heating, the unit will be connected by pipes to the boiler.

If cold water is used to provide cooling via a coil, the unit will be connected by pipes to a chiller
and will not contain a compressor, condenser, expansion valve, and evaporator.

Slide 25: Split Systems
In a split system, the compressor and condenser are located on the ground next to the building or
may be on the roof. The evaporators and one or more air handlers are inside the building, usually
in a mechanical room. In this case, refrigerant piping is required to penetrate through the building
envelope. This may be smaller than the ductwork needed for a unitary system. Those systems
tend to be used in smaller buildings.


Slide 26: Packaged Systems
You should know both the advantages and disadvantages of packaged units.


Advantages:

The advantages of packaged units include:

Relatively low initial cost.
Ease of installation.
No machinery room, which brings more cost savings.
No loss of rentable floor space.
Prepackaged units with guaranteed performance simplify the system designcontractors can
order from a catalog.
Small tenants can own and operate their own units.
Managing several small units independently may be more energy efficient than a large central
unit that has to run even when only a small part of the space needs cooling.

Disadvantages:

If there is no air-return or relief fan, then the building code requirements for exhaust air in the
event of a fire may not be met.
Choosing the right unit size will be critical for energy efficiency. Oversizing a unit is not
desirable.

Packaged equipment may employ step controls, which only have a few possible settings, and
can limit the quality of temperature and humidity control.
Air intakes should be far from air exhausts and plumbing vents, which may not be possible if
the unit is mounted on a small roof.
Access walkways are required to prevent damage and water leaks caused by walking on the
roof.
Water coils in the units must be protected from freezing.
Direct expansion (DX) refrigeration equipment cycles off and on when it is partially loaded,
which can cause swings in space humidity without proper control. The DX cooling coil retains
water removed from the air; when the refrigeration is off, the moisture is re-entrained into the
warm airstream passing over the cooling coil.

Slide 27: Summary
That concludes the course HVAC Systems I: Introduction to HVAC Systems. Take a moment to
review what you have learned.

The seven HVAC processes include heating, cooling, humidifying, dehumidifying, cleaning,
ventilating, and air movement.

The components of an HVAC systems include source equipment such as chillers or boilers,
distribution components such as ducts and pipes, delivery components such as radiators and
other terminal devices, and control components such as sensors and actuators.

Recall that most HVAC systems are based on all-air, all-water, or a combination of both.
Additionally, systems may be central systems, unitary systems, or packaged systems. Systems
can be split with some components inside and some outside a building.

Finally, all-air systems may be single-duct, dual-duct, or multizone.

Slide 28: Thank You!
Thank you for participating in this course.

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2012 Schneider Electric. All rights reserved. All trademarks provided are the property of their respective owners.

HVAC Systems I: Introduction to HVAC Systems

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