Sustainability and energy analysis of air conditioning systems at building communities

Sustainability has been increasingly advocated by the construction sector worldwide because of the need to reduce the industry’s antagonistic effects. Many studies have investigated a wide range of sustainability practices within the construction sector. The present study discusses sustainability analysis: CFD Simulation, Energy Saving, Cost Analysis, and Carbon Footprint for a simulated building located in Luxor, Egypt. The building enclosures are conference and coworking rooms. The cooling load calculation was analyzed to determine total load demand by using the HAP program for a simulated building. Using CFD software ANSYS® Fluent for building simulation, turbulence modeling was performed using the standard k-ε model for two enclosures inside a simulated building, where it is indicated that there are good values with vertical temperature distribution. The estimation of energy saving between using an Air Handling Unit (AHU) and an Active Chilled Beam (ACB) was performed. Due to using ACB instead of AHU, the results show that energy savings amount to approximately 21%, reduction in chiller plant capacity by 16%, which reflects higher thermal efficiency; the amount of cost saving is 10%, CO2 emissions saving is 22% and annual emission saving is 38,537 kg CO2. Therefore, using ACB has a significant effect on thermal efficiency and energy saving compared to using AHU.